iiiliilliSliiiliil 


fi^^tiy'^ii^h 


5  '.*t,*^*|  -.^l 


iilf 


ili 


mnm 


l^'Ai'll 


iiiiKii;;is 


(SCIE]^TIFIC.) 


ANNUAL  OF  SCIENTIFIC  DISCOVERY.  11  vols.,  from  1850-1860. 
By  D.  A.  Wells,  A.  M.  With  Portraits  of  distinguished  men.  12mo.  $1.25 
each. 

THE  PLURALITY  OF  WORLDS;  a  new  edition,  with  the  author's  re- 
views  of  his  reviewers.    12mo.    $1.00. 

COMPARATIVE  ANATOMY  OF  THE  ANIMAL  KINGDOM.  By 
Profs.  SiEBOLD  and  Stawnius.    Translated  by  W.  I.  Burnett,  M.  D.    8vo. 

$3.00 

HUGH  MILLERS  WORKS.  Testimoxy  of  the  Rocks.  With  Illus- 
trations.   12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 


Footprints  of  the  Creator.    With  Il- 
lustrations.   Memoir  by  Louis  Agassiz.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

The  Old  Red  Sandstone.     With  Illus- 


trations, etc.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 


My  Schools  and   Schoolmasters.    An 

Autobiography,    Full-length  Portrait  of  Author.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 

First  Impressions  of  England  and  its 


People.     With  fine  Portrait.    12mo,  cloth.    $100. 


Cruise  of  the  Betsey.   A  Ramble  among 


the  Fossiliferous  Deposits  of  the  Hebrides.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 
Popular  Geology.    l2mo,  cloth.  $1.25. 


HUGH  CULLER'S  WORKS,  7  vols.,  embossed  cloth,  with  box,  $8.25. 

UNITED  STATES  EXPLORING  EXPEDITION,  under  Charles 
Wilkes.  Vol.  XII.,  Mollusca  and  Shells.  By  A.  A.  Gould,  M.  D.  4to. 
$1000. 

LAKE  SUPERIOR.  Its  Physical  Character,  Vegetation,  and  Animals.  By 
L.  Agassiz.    Svo.    $3.50. 

THE  NATURAL  HISTORY  OF  THE  HUMAN  SPECIES.  By  C. 
Hamilton  Smith.  With  Elegant  Illustrations.  With  Introduction,  con. 
taining  an  abstract  of  the  views  of  eminent  writers  on  the  subject,  by  S. 
Kneeland,  M.  D.    12mo.    $1.25. 

THE  CAMEL.  His  organization,  habits,  and  uses,  with  reference  to  his  ictro- 
duction  into  the  United  States.    By  George  P.  Marsh.    12mo.    63  cents. 

INFLUENCE  OF  THE  HISTORY  OF  SCIENCE  UPON  INTEL- 
LECTUAL EDUCATION.    By  W.  Whewell,  D.  D.    12mo.    25  cents. 

SPIRITUALISM  TESTED;  or,  the  Fact.s  of  its  History  Classified,  and  ti'.eir 
causes  in  Nature  verified  from  Ancient  aiul  ]\rodern  Testimonies.  By  Ceo. 
W".  Samson,  D.  D.    16mo,  clotii.    38  cents. 

'5i; 


THE      WITNESS       PAPERS. 


THE 


HEADSHIP  OF  CHRIST, 

AND     THE 

RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  PEOPLE, 

A     COLLECTION     OP 

ESSAYS,  HISTORICAL   AND  DESCRIPTIVE  SKETCHES,   AKD 
PERSONAL  PORTRAITURES. 

WITH     THE     author's 

HUGH    MILLER, 

ACTHOR  OF   "FOOTPRINTS  OF  THE  CREATOR."  "TESTIMONY  Or  THE  EOCKS, 
"OLD  RED  SANDSTONE,"  "POPULAR  GEOLOGY,"  ETC. 

BY    PETER    BAYNE,    A.M. 


BOSTON: 

aOULD     AND     LINCOLN, 

59     WASHINGTON      STREET. 

NEW    YORK:    SHELDON   AND    COMPANY. 
CINCINNATI  :  GEORGE   S.  BLANCHARD. 

1863. 


Entered  according  to  Act  of  Congress,  in  the  year  1863,  by 

G  O  U  L  D    A  Is  D    L  I  N  C  O  L  N, 

In  the  Clerk's  Office  of  the  District  Court  of  the  District  of  Massachusetts. 


^2iirc 


ADVEETISEME 


TO     THE     AMERICAN     EDITION. 


This  volume,  like  the  previous  works  of  Hugh  Miller,  is  issued 
by  special  arrangement  with  the  author's  family ;  while  Mr.  Bayne, 
the  editor,  in  a  note  to  his  Preface  to  the  English  edition,  presents 
in  brief  the  historic  facts  that  caused  the  division  of  the  Scottish 
Church,  and  has  thus  rendered  the  entire  discussion  more  intel- 
ligible to  American  readers,  and  at  the  same  time  developed  the 
great  importance  of  the  principles  involved. 

Hitherto  the  author  has  been  chiefly  known  for  his  writings  on 
Geology,  and  in  some  other  departments  of  secular  literature, 
where  he  has  won  a  distinguished  name  and  achieved  a  prominent 
place  among  the  lights  of  his  age ;  in  this  work  he  is  presented 
in  a  new  character,  as  the  champion  of  the  Church  in  the  exciting 
period  of  her  history  to  which  these  articles  refer.  In  this  field  of 
effort,  no  less  than  in  those  more  quiet  walks  in  which  he  delighted 
to  range,  he  exhibits  a  fresh,  vivid,  and  natural  style,  and  that  won- 
derful skill  in  description  which  Dr.  Buckland  said  he  would  give 
his  left  hand  to  possess. 

The  celebrated  letter  to  Lord  Brougham,  which  first  directed 
public  attention  to  Mr.  Miller  as  a  powerful  writer,  and  as  the  man 


IV  ADVERTISEMENT. 

best  fitted  to  espouse  and  maintain  the  cause  of  the  Church,  will 
be  found  at  the  opening  of  the  volume  ;  and  the  papers,  generally, 
prepared  by  Mr.  Miller  in  this  cause,  which  enlisted  his  warmest  in- 
terest and  engaged  his  best  powers,  are  characterized  by  Mr.  Bayne, 
in  his  Preface,  as  "  noble  in  eloquence,  keen  in  satire,  powerful  in 
invective,  and  masterly  in  argument." 

Though  written  with  primary  reference  to  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land and  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  Scottish  people,  the  great 
principles  advocated  in  the  work  lie  at  the  foundation  of  all  reli- 
gious prosperity,  while  those  against  which  it  contends  are  insepara- 
bly associated  with  spiritual  torpor  and  death ;  and  the  discussion  is 
thus  appropriate  to  all  times  and  places. 

The  English  edition  of  this  work  contains  an  Appendix  on  "  the 
Cardross  Case,"  embracing  the  address  of  Dr.  Candlish  before  the 
Commission  of  the  General  Assembly  in  relation  thereto.  As  the  ad- 
dress is  of  considerable  length,  and  its  details  of  no  special  interest 
to  American  readers,  instead  of  this  Appendix  will  be  found  a  brief 
outline  of  the  more  recent  history  of  the  controversy,  including  a 
statement  of  the  Cardross  case,  and  of  the  present  aspect  of  the 
whole  question. 

The  work  will  secure  many  readers  on  this  side  of  the  Atlantic, 
and  add  to  the  author's  great  popularity. 

American  Publishers- 
Boston,  October  1,  1863. 


%--iSQLOGIC&L 


PREFACE 


To  enter  into  the  spirit  of  this  book  we  must  distinctly 
apprehend  the  conception  formed  by  its  author  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Church  of  Scotland. 

Throughout  her  entire  history  the  Scottish  Church  has 
been  distinguished  by  two  leading  characteristics,  seldom  found 
in  combination. 

First :  She  has  assumed  a  high  and  commanding  ecclesias- 
tical position,  claiming  a  jurisdiction  in  spiritual  concerns  inde- 
pendent of  and  coordinate  with  the  jurisdiction  of  the  civil 
magistrate.  She  has  declared  Christ  the  Head  of  the  Church, 
not  in  any  abstract  and  inconsequential  sense,  but  to  the 
clear  practical  effect  of  having  given  his  Church  upon  earth 
a  code  of  law,  —  the  Scriptures  of  the  Old  and  New  Testa- 
ment, —  and  of  empowering  and  requiring  her  to  regulate  her 
aJSTairs  by  that  code  alone. 

Secondly :    She  has  been  eminently  a  Church  of  the  people. 

What  she  claimed,  she  claimed  not  as  a  hierarchy,  not  as  a 

clerical  corporation,  but  as  a  congregation  of  Christians.     The 

minister    had  his    place  ;    the  member  had  his  place.      The 

1* 


VI  PREFACE. 

powers  and  rights  of  each  were  held  equally  from  Christ  the 
King, 

By  both  these  characteristics  the  Church  of  Scotland  has 
been  distinguished  from  the  Church  of  England. 

The  southern  Establishment  was  the  work  of  kings  and 
statesmen.  The  constitution  of  the  Church  grew  gradually 
into  shape  and  form  as  part  of  the  civil  constitution  of  the 
realm.  Slight  share  in  its  construction  was  taken  by 
divines ;  —  no  share  at  all  by  the  people.  It  was  Henry,  it 
was  Burleigh,  it  was  Elizabeth,  who  were  the  nursing  fathers 
and  nursing  mothers  of  the  Church  of  England.  Ecclesias- 
tical personages  aspired  to  nothing  higher  than  being  their 
recognized  and  rewarded  functionaries.  From  their  position 
as  divines  they  derived  no  commanding  or  regulating  author- 
ity. The  mechanism  of  the  Church  of  Rome  occupied  the 
land,  and  they  complacently  lent  their  aid  while  it  was 
adapted  to  the  circumstances  of  a  civil  popedom.  The  ques- 
tion of  the  original  constitution  of  the  Christian  Church  was 
not  forced  upon  them  by  circumstances,  and  they  were  well 
content  to  evade  it.  The  result  was,  that  independent  spir- 
itual jurisdiction  was  conclusively  withheld  from  the  Church 
of  England.     The  Act  of  Supremacy  bound  her  to  the  state. 

The  part  played  by  the  people  in  the  construction  of  the 
Church  of  England  was  still  more  insignificant  than  that 
played  by  divines.  The  Tudor  sovereigns  —  able,  energetic, 
imperious,  proud  by  nature,  proud  in  virtue  of  their  prerog- 
ative—  thought  httle  of  the  feelings  of  the  commonalty  in 
promulgating  their  haughty  decrees.     The  English  —  the  most 


PREFACE.  VII 

peaceable,  long-suffering,  and  loyal  of  European  nations  —  had 
not  yet  dreamed  of  asserting  their  dignity  and  rights  against 
the  majesty  of  monarchs.  They  did,  indeed,  at  last  awaken. 
When  the  sceptre  was  held  by  a  race  intellectually  and 
morally  inferior  to  the  Tudors;  when  loyalty  and  reverence 
had  been  sapped  by  contempt ;  when  nearly  half  a  century 
of  treacherous  oppression  had  roused  to  irresistible  fury  the 
tremendous  instincts  of  religion  and  natural  justice,  —  the 
people  of  England  showed  themselves.  The  Puritans  en- 
gaged in  a  struggle  for  two  objects  :  civil  liberty,  and  the 
reformation  of  religion.  The  civil  constitution  of  England 
they  vindicated  in  its  ancient  principles,  and  placed  impreg- 
nably  on  its  modern  basis.  But  when  the  long  and  eventful 
conflict  was  at  an  end,  the  constitution  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land remained  essentially  unchanged,  and  the  Christian  people 
were  7iot  recognized  as  one  of  its  integral  parts. 

The  history  of  Scotland  presents  an  entirely  different 
ecclesiastical  prospect.  The  vehement  and  impetuous  nation 
north  of  the  Tweed  embraced  the  Reformation  with  a  decis- 
ion and  enthusiasm  which  brooked  no  half-measures.  The 
Church  of  Rome  was  first  of  all  overthrown  from  base  to 
turret,  and  a  platform  found  for  a  new  construction.  In 
rearing  the  new  edifice,  divines  bore  a  chief,  and  statesmen  a 
subordinate  part.  And  these  were  divines  who  magnified  their 
office  !  They  had  learned  in  the  school  of  Calvin  to  see  the 
glitter  of  earthly  crowns  pale  in  the  fight  of  the  sanctuary, 
to  exalt  the  Church  as  the  city  of  God  upon  earth,  to  set 
small  store  by  human  authority  against  the  voice  which  they 


VIII  PREFACE. 

believed  tliey  heard  speaking  direct  from  heaven.  They 
invoked  their  Divine  King  to  lay  the  foundation  of  His 
House.  Ten  centuries,  of  prescription  were  less  to  them  than 
one  promise  of  Christ.  They  have  been  accused  of  narrow- 
ness, of  fanaticism,  of  violence ;  but  all  the  world  has  recog- 
nized them  as  men  of  intrepid  courage,  of  iron  will,  of  high 
devotion,  who  quailed  not  in  the  presence  of  kings.  Knox, 
Melville,  Henderson,  were  very  different  personages  from 
those  politic  and  temporizing  prelates  who  showed  a  courtier- 
like subservience  to  Henry,  or  trembled  lest  Elizabeth  should 
unfrock  them.  As  churchmen,  they  would  have  no  king  but 
Christ.  They  practically  vindicated  the  doctrine  of  Christ's 
Headship,  by  securing  that  no  Act  of  Supremacy  w^as  inscribed 
in  the  statute-book  of  Scotland.  And  they  had  a  nation  at 
their  back,  —  an  earnestly,  ardently  believing  nation,  —  "a 
nation,"  says  Carlyle,  "  of  heroes."  The  circumstances  of 
their  position  were  such  that  they  could  not,  and  their  char- 
acter and  the  doctrines  of  their  Church  were  such  that,  under 
any  circumstances,  they  assuredly  would  not  have  overlooked 
the  people.  The  consent  of  the  congregation  —  laid  down  by 
Calvin  in  the  Institutes  as  an  essential  element  in  the  appoint- 
ment of  ministers  —  was  given  effect  to  in  the  ecclesiastical 
constitution  by  means  of  the  Call.  And  thus  the  Church  of 
Scotland  became  known  to  history  and  to  fame  as  having  rec- 
onciled the  seeming  contradictions  of  an  intensely  ecclesiastical 
and  a  broadly  popular  character. 

Under  these  auspices  the   General  Assembly  of  the    Kirk 
came    into  existence.     Implicitly   confided   in   by   the  people, 


PREFACE.  IX 

and  representing  even  the  laity  to  a  far  larger  extent  than 
the  Scottish  Parliament,  it  exercised  throughout  the  seven- 
teenth century  a  commanding  influence  in  all  the  affairs  of 
the  kingdom.  The  objects  for  which  it  contended  were  the 
same  as  those  of  the  early  English  Puritans ;  but  its  victory 
was  more  complete  than  theirs.  At  the  Revolution  settlement, 
it  appeared  that  both  the  civil  and  religious  liberties  of  Scot- 
land were  vindicated.  In  the  Treaty  of  Union,  which  speedily 
followed,  the  constitution  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  was  care- 
fully guarded.  The  Act  of  Supremacy  was  confined  to  the 
southern  part  of  the  island,  and  no  provision  was  made  for  the 
introduction  of  patronage  into  Scotland.  In  possession  of  a 
spiritual  independence  never  claimed  by  the  sister  EstabHsh- 
ment,  and  with  the  rights  of  the  Christian  people  intact,  the 
Kirk  of  Knox  and  Melville,  the  Kirk  of  the  Westminster 
Confession  and  the  Solemn  League  and  Covenant,  —  the  old, 
indomitable  Kirk  of  Scotland,  —  rested  from  her  labors. 

All  this  was  to  Hugh  Miller  a  faith  deliberately  ratified 
by  his  intellect,  and  enshrined  with  dearest  and  most  exalt- 
ing associations  in  his  heart  of  hearts.  Patriotism  and 
affectionate  reverence  —  the  feeling  with  which  an  English- 
man regards  the  Long  Parliament,  and  the  feeling  with  which 
•a  Jew  of  old  regarded  the  Temple  on  Mount  Moriah  —  were 
combined  in  the  emotions  with  which  he  contemplated  his 
Church.  To  stand  in  spirit  by  the  side  of  her  great  men ; 
to  follow  her  with  compassionate  or  exulting  sympathy  from 
reverse  to  reverse,  from  triumph  to  triumph ;  to  draw  his 
breath  deep  in  unutterable  execration  at  thought  of  the  apos- 


X  PREFACE. 

tate  Lauderdale  or  the  bloodhound  Claverhouse ;  to  know 
her  for  his  country's  Church,  when  her  canopy  was  the  mist  of 
the  hill,  and  the  trampling  of  the  troopers  broke  in  upon  the 
lifted  psalm,  as  well  and  as  proudly  as  when  she  bearded  nion- 
archs,  and  set  her  foot  on  the  necks  of  her  enemies,  —  this 
seemed  involved  in  the  fact  o|"  his  being  a  Scotchman.  That  a 
fundamental  principle  of  her  constitution,  such  as  the  right  of 
the  Christian  people  to  have  no  minister  intruded  upon  them, 
after  being  preserved  through  the  storms  and  treacheries  of  a 
century,  should  be  set  aside  by  a  Patronage  Act  smuggled  by 
Tories  through  the  British  Parliament  in  contravention  of  the 
Treaty  of  Union,  was  to  him  an  absurd  idea.  He  looked 
upon  the  Patronage  Act  as  a  galling  fetter,  which  her  creed 
and  her  history  pledged  the  Church  to  cast  off.  He  sympa- 
thized with  the  Seceders  of  the  last  century  in  their  refusal  to 
wear  it.  He  assented  to  the  petition  against  it  sent  up  year  by 
year  to  Parliament  from  the  General  Assembly,  until  Moderate 
ascendency  culminated  under  Robertson^  and  the  Church,  for 
the  first  time  in  her  history,  winked  at  her  own  humiliation. 
In  the  evangelical  minor! tj-  of  the  eighteenth  century,  headed 
by  Erskine,  he  recognized  his  beloved  Church  as  cordially  and 
as  confidently  as  in  the  homeless  hill-men  who  clung  to  Peden 
and  to  Cameron  in  the  seventeenth.  When  that  minority- 
swelled  into  a  majority,  —  when  the  ancestral  principles  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  shone  out  once  more  broad  and  clear, — 
there  was  no  man  better  fitted  to  understand  the  position  of 
the  Establishment — no  man  more  ready  to  support  and  defend 
her  —  than  Hugh  Miller. 


PREFACE.  Xr 

The  struggle  between  the  Church  of  Scotland  and  the  civil 
authority,  which  ended  in  the  Disruption,  was  inaugurated  by 
the  passing  of  the  Veto  Act  by  the  Church.  The  conflict  took 
shape  and  character  throughout  from  that  celebrated  enact- 
ment. In  daring  to  put  into  the  hands  of  the  people  a  veto  on 
any  minister  presented  to  a  charge,  but  not  accepted  by  the 
congregation,  the  Church  vindicated  both  her  ancient  and  dis- 
tinctive principles.  She  proclaimed  that  the  rights  of  the 
Christian  people  were  inalienably  secured  to  them  ;  and  she 
asserted  her  power,  in  face  of  an  existent  act  of  Parliament, 
to  give  those  rights  effect.  Non-intrusion  and  spiritual  inde- 
pendence were  thus  linked  together  throughout  the  Ten  Years' 
Conflict. 

That  Hugh  Miller  viewed  the  contest  in  this  manner,  we 
know  from  his  own  words.  "  The  contendings  of  the  Seces- 
sion in  the  last  century,"  he  wrote,  shortly  before  the  Dis- 
ruption, "  involved  mainly  the  Non-intrusion  principle.  The 
contendings  of  our  Presbyterian  fathers  in  the  century  previous 
involved  mainly  the  great  doctrine  that  Christ  is  the  only 
Head  of  the  Church,  and  that,  in  the  things  which  pertain  to 
his  kingdom,  she  owns  no  other  Lord  but  Him.  And  in  our 
piesent  struggle,  hoth  these  twin  principles  of  strength  are 
united^ 

The  present  volume  consists  of  two  celebrated  pamphlets 
written  by  Hugh  Miller  in  defence  of  the  contending  Church, 
and  of  a  gleaning  —  a  scanty  and  desultory  gleaning  —  from 
his  articles  in  the  Witness  newspaper  on  the  Church  question. 
These  will  assuredly  convey  no  adequate  idea  of  his  part  in 


XII  PREFACE. 

the  Disruption  controversy.  It  was  only  here  and  there  that 
an  article  could  be  selected.  To  have  taken  all  that  displayed 
high  excellence,  —  all  that  were  noble  in  eloquence,  keen  and 
briUiant  in  satire,  powe-rful  in  invective,  or  masterly  in  argu- 
inent,  —  would  have  been  to  fill  many  volumes.  It  is  likely 
that  articles  which  created  a  particularly  wide  and  deep  sensa- 
tion at  the  time,  and  are  still  vividly  remembered,  will  be 
missed.  To  revive  the  interest  which  made  them  effective,  —  to 
call  from  oblivion  some  speech,  pamphlet,  or  party  manoeuvre, 
agitating  all  minds  at  the  time,  and  now  everlastingly  forgotten, 
—  was  impossible.  It  has  been  carefully  endeavored,  also,  to 
avoid  inflicting  pain  upon  any  still  alive  who  were  engaged  in 
the  conflict,  or  upon  the  surviving  relatives  of  those  who  have 
died.  Controversy  is  controversy ;  and  Hugh  Miller  fought 
for  his  Church  with  the  earnestness  and  vehemence  of  his  cov- 
enanting fathers  at  Marston  Moor  or  Drumclog.  But  when 
the  dust  of  the  fight  is  laid,  and  its  din  is  over,  —  when  the 
grave  has  closed  over  so  many  of  the  combatants,  —  it  would  be 
useless,  and  it  would  be  ungracious,  to  reawaken  its  animosities. 
Of  the  influence  exerted  upon  the  public  mind  of  Scotland 
by  Hugh  Miller's  articles  in  the  Witness  on  the  Church  ques- 
tion, there  are  thousands  still  living  who  can  speak.  A  year 
or  two  before  the  Disruption,  I  passed  a  winter  in  a  Highland 
manse.  I  was  too  young  to  form  a  distinct  idea  of  the  merits 
of  the  dispute.  But  there  was  a  sound  then  in  the  air  which 
I  could  not  help  hearing.  It  seems  as  if  it  were  in  my  ears 
still.  Never  have  I  witnessed  so  steady,  intense,  enthralling 
an  excitement.     And  I  have  no  difficulty,  even  at  this  distance, 


PREFACE.  XIII 

in  discriminating  the  name  wliich  rung  loudest  through  the  agi- 
tated land.  It  was  that  of  Hugh  Miller,  —  the  people's  friend, 
champion,  hero.  There  are  men,  there  are  family  circles,  to 
whom  certain  of  these  articles  will  suggest  pathetic  recollec- 
tions. A  sentence,  a  word,  will  recall  the  olden  time,  with  its 
hallowed,  its  tender,  its  stirring  associations :  the  fireside  of 
the  manse,  round  which  member  after  member  of  the  family 
grew  up  ;  the  garden,  with  its  old  fruit-trees  and  familiar  walks ; 
the  broad,  bright,  placid  landscape,  stretching  from  the  maxise- 
door ;  the  unadorned  church  close  at  hand,  with  the  household 
graves  around  it ;  —  and  then  the  eye  will  see  to  read  no  more. 
With  all  its  defects,  this  volume  will  illustrate  with  some 
comprehensiveness  the  manner  in  which  Hugh  Miller  took 
part  in  the  Disruption  Controversy.  It  will  show  to  what  a 
marvellous  point  of  perfection  he  was  equipped  for  the  work 
he  had  to  do :  how  familiar  to  him  was  the  whole  range  of 
Scottish  history,  ecclesiastical  and  literary ;  how  accurately  he 
had  appreciated  Presbyterianism  as  an  influence  in  all  prov- 
inces of  Scottish  life ;  how  perfectly  he  understood  the  rela- 
tions of  parties  in  the  Church  and  kingdom  of  Scotland,  at 
every  stage  of  the  national  history.  He  is  seen  assailing 
patronage  from  every  point,  —  exposing  its  unconstitutional 
introduction,  its  disgraceful  history,  its  pernicious  practical 
effects.  The  volume  contains  also  his  deliberate  and  emphatic 
testimony  to  the  doctrine  of  the  Headship  of  Christ.  Though 
dead,  he  may  still  be  heard  speaking  to  the  people  of  Scotland 
on  that  sacred  and  momentous  theme.     The  following  sentences, 

in  which  he  described  the  impression  made  upon  certain  per- 

2 


XIV  PREFACE. 

sons  by  attempts  practically  to  insist  upon  the  doctrine  in  ques- 
tion, read  in  the  light  of  present  occurrences  and  prevailing 
frames  of  mind,  maj  seem  almost  prophetic:  —  "As  a  practical 
rule  of  conduct,  that  sets  itself  in  opposition  to  secular  interests, 
judicial  interdicts,  and  the  decisions  of  magistrates,  they  can- 
not and  will  not  tolerate  it.  Their  merely  nominal  belief  in 
Christianity  —  held  as  so  respectable  and  so  praiseworthy  at 
other  times  —  always  puts  on,  in  such  circumstances,  its  true 
character  as  simply  no  belief  at  all.  Christ  becomes  to  them 
a  mere  phantom  King,  unreal  and  invisible ;  and  his  kingly 
authority  appears  but  as  a  mischievous  and  repulsive  fiction, 
subversive  of  the  principles  of  good  government." 

And  are  these  questions  of  spiritual  independence  and  of 
non-intrusion,  after  all,  but  lingering  phantoms,  paling  grad- 
ually, and  sure  to  pass  away  in  the  light  of  progress  ?  Many 
think  so,  —  many  able,  and  not  a  few  devout  men.  I  think 
they  err.  That,  in  face  of  all  the  coercion  which  can  possibly 
be  brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject,  the  genuine  Presbyterians 
of  Scotland  will  maintain  both,  need  not  be  doubted.  But  may 
not  England  awake  to  a  new  interest  in  the  rights  of  the  Chris- 
tian people,  and  in  the  independence  of  the  Church  ?  May 
not  the  liberal  and  thinking  part  of  the  community,  scandalized 
and  distressed  by  such  scenes  as  have  recently  occurred  in  a 
London  church,  ask  whether  the  just  and  rational  remedy  for 
such  a  state  of  things  is  not  to  give  congregations  a  voice  in 
choosing  their  own  ministers?  And  may  not  those  in  the 
Church  of  England  who  hold  most  closely  by  the  principles  of 
the  Puritans  bethink  themselves  whether  they  have  not  un- 


PREFACE.  XV 

wisely  lost  sight  of  one  doctrine  professed  by  Cartwright  in 
England,  and  by  all  the  reformers  in  the  northern  part  of  the 
island,  —  the  doctrine  that  Christ  is  King  and  Head  of  his 
Church,  and  that  it  is  in  the  prince's  province  "  to  exercise  no 
spiritual  jurisdiction  "  ? 


It  is  hardly  necessary  to  add  a  single  word  to  the  preced- 
ing, in  order  to  render  this  volume  intelligible  to  American 
readers.  Stated  in  the  simplest  form,  and  apart  from  technical 
phraseology,  the  principles  for  which  the  Church  of  Scotland 
contended  in  the  years  preceding  the  Disruption  of  1843  were 
these :  —  the  right  of  congregations  to  choose  their  pastors, 
and  the  competence  of  a  Church  of  Christ  to  manage  her  spir- 
itual and  distinctive  concerns  in  her  own  courts.  In  1834  the 
Church  of  Scotland  decreed  that  the  will  of  congregations 
should  form  an  essential  element  in  the  settlement  of  pastors. 
In  the  same  year  Lord  Kinnoul,  patron  of  the  parish  of  Auch- 
terarder,  in  Perthshire,  presented  that  living  to  Mr.  Eobert 
Young,  preacher  of  the  Gospel.  The  Call,  or  document  signi- 
fying the  assent  of  the  congregation  to  the  appointment  of  Mr. 
Young,  was  signed  by  three  persons,  only  two  of  whom 
belonged  to  the  parish.  Dissatisfaction  with  the  appointment 
was  expressed  by  two  hundred  and  eighty-seven  out  of  three 
hundred  and  thirty,  who,  as  being  in  full  communion  with  the 
Church,  were  entitled    to  exercise   the  privih^ge.     To  install 


XVI  PREFACE. 

Mr.  Yonng,  therefore,  as  minister  of  Auchterarder,  would 
have  been  a  clear  case  of  intrusion,  —  exactly  such  a  case  as 
the  Church  had  guarded  against  by  her  act  of  1834.  The 
Presbytery,  in  obedience  to  the  law  of  the  Church,  refused  to 
ordain  him.  Lord  Kinnoul  and  Mr.  Young  had  recourse  to 
the  Court  of  Session,  to  compel  the  Presbytery  to  proceed  with 
the  ordination.  The  court  granted  their  request  by  a  decision 
pronounced  in  1838.  The  House  of  Lords  confirmed  this 
judgment  in  the  following  year.  Between  the  decision  of 
their  Lordships  and  the  occurrence  of  the  Disruption  no  new 
principle  emerged.  A  civil  court  had  undertaken  to  force  the 
Church  of  Scotland  to  ordain  a  minister,  and  to  ordain  him 
against  the  will  of  the  people.  Rather  than  submit,  the  Church 
cut  her  state  moorings,  and  became  free.  To  recount  the  inci- 
dents of  the  conflict  would  be  neither  interesting  nor  useful. 
For  several  years  State  and  Church  in  Scotland  were  continu- 
ally in  collision.  Many  attempts  at  reconciliation  were  made. 
But  to  understand  the  position  taken  up  by  each  we  need  only 
to  understand  the  Auchterarder  case. 

PETER    BAYNE. 
London,  Octobek  2, 1863. 


CONTENTS, 


THE   HEADSHIP   OF   CHRIST. 

PAGE 

Letter  to  Lord  Brougham  (June,  1839) 19 

The  Whiggism  of  the  Old  School  (August,  1839)        ...  40 

The  Literary  Character  of  Knox  (Mar.  4,  1840)         ...  81 

Dr.  Thomas  M'Crie  (June,  1840) 93 

The  Debate  on  Missions  (October,  1841) 144 


THE   RIGHTS   OF   THE   CHRISTIAN  PEOPLE. 

The  Two  Parties  in  the  Church  of  Scotland  (Jan.  15,  1840)  .  200 

The  Twin  Presbyteries  of  Strathbogie  (Feb.  5,  1840)     .        .  204 

The  Two  Students  (Feb.  8,  1840) 209 

The  Presentation  TO  Daviot  (Feb.  12,  1840) 215 

The  Communicants  of  the  North  Country  (Feb.  22,  1810)  .  220 
Spiritual  Independence  the  Distinctive  Privilege  of  the 

Church  of  Scotland  (March  7,  1840)  ....  =  .  228 
The  "Grasping  Ambition"  of  the  Non-Intrusionists  (Mar.  2.5, 

1840) 230 

Popular  Estimate  of  the  Two  Parties  (April  25,  1840)      .        .  235 

The  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  Bill  (May  9,  1840) 241 

The  Scotch  People  and  the  Presbyterian  Church  (May  20, 

1»10) 248 


XVIII  CONTENTS. 

PAOS 

MoDERATiSM  POPULAR,  Where  akd  Wht  (June  6,  1840)  .  .  251 
The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  v.  the  People  of  Scotland  (June  17, 

1840) 256 

Debate  in  the  Edinburgh  Presbytery  on  Lord  Aberdeen's 

Bill  (July  4,  1840) 263 

Revival  in  Alness  (Sept.  2,  1840) 270 

CONSERVATISiM  ON  REVIVALS  (Oct.  14,  1840) 279 

The  Outrage  at  Marnoch  (Jan.  27,  1841) 285 

Supplementary  Notes  of  the  Settlement  at  Marnoch  (Feb.  3, 

1841) 292 

Sketches  of  the  General  Assembly  of  1841  (May  21,  1841)     .  298 

Scottish  Lawyers:  their  Two  Classes  (June  5,  1841)        .        .  335 

The  New  Policy;  Evangelical  Moderates  (Sept.  14,  1841)      .  339 

Moderatism:  SOME  OF  the  Better  Classes  (Sept.  22,  1841)        .  347 

Prayer:  the  True  and  the  Counterfeit  (Dec.  29,  1841)  .  .  352 
Mr.  Isaac  Taylor  on  the  Independence  of  the  Church  (Jan.  1, 

1842) 356 

Defence  Associations  (Jan.  8,  1842) 359 

Foreshadowings  (February  2,  1842) 364 

Translations  into  Fact  (February,  1842) 368 

The  Two  Conflicts  (May  25,  1842) 391 

Tendencies  (December,  1842,  to  May,  1843)        .....  402 

Mr.  Forsyth's  "  Remarks  "  (Jan.  14,  1843) 455 

State-Carpentry  (May  17, 1843) 465 

The  Disruption  (May  20,  1843) 475 

The  Close  (June  1,  1843) 482 

Union  and  its  Principles  (June  10,  1843)        .               ...  488 

Appendix— An  outline  of  the  more  recent  history  of  the  controversy, 
with  a  statement  of  the  **  Cardross  Case." 


THE 


HEADSHIP   OF  CHRIST. 


LETTER  TO  LORD  BROUGHAM. 


A  VOLUME  consisting  of  the  principal  contributions  made  by 
Hugh  Miller  to  the  literature  of  the  Ten  Years'  Conflict  cannot  be 
more  appropriately  introduced  than  with  the  celebrated  pamphlet  in 
which  he  first  stepped  forward  to  take  that  lead  in  the  lay  and 
popular  championship  of  the  Church  which  he  thenceforth  continued 
to  hold.  Having,  as  he  informs  us  in  the  "  Schools  and  School- 
masters," been  deeply  moved  by  the  decision,  adverse  to  the  claims 
of  the  evangelical  majority,  delivered  by  the  Court  of  Session  in 
March,  1838,  and  by  that  of  the  House  of  Lords  in  1839,  he  experi- 
enced an  ardent  aspiration  to  offer  some  aid  to  his  Church  in  her 
hour  of  peril.  The  speech  of  Lord  Brougham  in  the  Upper  House 
furnished  the  occasion  required,  "  I  tossed  wakefully,"  says  Mr. 
Miller,  "  throughout  a  long  night,  in  which  I  formed  my  plan  of  taking 
up  the  purely  popular  side  of  the  question ;  and  in  the  morning  I 
sat  down  to  state  my  views  to  the  people,  in  the  form  of  a  letter 
addressed  to  Lord  Brougham."  He  was  at  the  time  occupied  with 
the  duties  of  a  bank  ofRce,  but  in  the  fulness  of  his  heart  the  words 
flowed  apace :  in  about  a  week  the  composition  was  finished.  Being 
transmitted  to  Edinburgh,  and  brought  by  Mr.  Robert  Paul  under 
the  notice  of  Dr.  Candlish  and  other  evanjielical  leaders,  its  imme- 


20  LETTER  TO  LORD  BROUGHAM. 

diate  result  was  the  appointment  of  Mr.  Miller  to  the  editorship 
of  the  then  contemplated  "Witness"  newspaper.  On  being  pub- 
lished, it  ran  rapidly  through  four  editions,  and  was  referred  to  in 
terms  of  high  encomium  by  Mr.  O'Connell  on  the  one  hand,  and  by 
Mr.  Gladstone  on  the  other.  It  is  beyond  doubt  one  of  the  most 
masterly  performances  of  its  illustrious  author.  The  eloquence,  at 
once  impassioned  in  its  earnestness  and  majestic  in  its  calmness,  and 
the  comprehensiveness  and  clear  depth,  worthy  of  the  statesman  or 
the  philosophic  historian,  by  which  it  is  characterized,  impart  to  it 
an  interest  superior  to  all  local  or  temporary  circumstances.  It  is 
an  essay,  and  one  of  high  and  permanent  value,  upon  a  question 
inextricably  associated  with  what  is  noblest  and  most  instructive  in 
the  history  of  Scotland.  —  Ed. 

My  Lord  :  — 

I  am  a  plain  working  man,  in  rather  humble  circum- 
stances, a  native  of  the  north  of  Scotland,  and  a  member 
of  the  Established  Church.  I  am  acquainted  with  no 
other  language  than  the  one  in  which  I  address  your  lord- 
ship ;  and  the  very  limited  knowledge  which  I  possess 
has  been  won  slowly  and  painfully  from  observation  and 
reflection,  with  now  and  then  the  assistance  of  a  stray 
vohnne,  in  the  intervals  of  a  laborious  life.  I  am  not  too 
uninformed,  however,  to  appreciate  your  lordship's  extraor- 
dinary powers  and  acquirements;  and  as  the  cause  of  free- 
dom is  peculiarly  the  cause  of  the  class  to  which  I  belong, 
and  as  my  acquaintance  with  the  evils  of  ignorance  has 
been  by  much  too  close  and  too  tangible  to  leave  me  indif- 
ferent to  the  blessings  of  education,  I  have  been  no  careless 
or  uninterested  spectator  of  your  lordship's  public  career. 
No,  my  lord,  I  have  felt  my  heart  swell  as  I  pronounced 
the  name  of  Henry  Brougham. 

With  many  thousands  of  my  countrymen,  I  have  waited 
in  deep  anxiety  for  your  lordship's  opinion  on  the  Auch- 
terarder  case.      Aware   that   what   may  seem   clear  as  a 


LETTER   TO    LORD    BROUGHAM.  21 

matter  of  right  may  be  yet  exceedingly  doubtful  as  a  ques- 
tion of  law,  —  aware,  too,  that  your  lordship  had  to  decide 
in  this  matter,  not  as  a  legislator,  but  as  a  judge,  —  I  was 
afraid  that,  though  you  yourself  might  be  our  fi-iend,  you 
might  yet  have  to  pronounce  the  law  our  enemy.  And 
yet,  the  bare  majority  by  which  the  case  had  been  carried 
against  us  in  the  Court  of  Session, — the  consideration, 
too,  that  the  judges  who  had  declared  in  our  favor  rank 
among  Uie  ablest  lawyers  and  most  accomplished  men  that 
our  country  has  ever  produced,  —  had  inclined  me  to  hope 
that  the  statute-book,  as  interpreted  by  your  lordship, 
might  not  be  found  very  decidedly  against  us.  But  of  you 
yourself,  my  lord,  I  could  entertain  no  doubt.  You  had 
exerted  all  your  energies  in  sweeping  away  the  Old  Sarums 
and  East  Retfords  of  the  constitution.  Could  I  once 
harbor  the  suspicion  that  you  had  become  tolerant  of  the 
Old  Sarums  and  East  Retfords  of  the  Church?  You  had 
declared,  whether  wisely  or  otherwise,  that  men  possessed 
of  no  property  qualification,  and  as  humble  and  as  little 
taught  as  the  individual  who  now  addresses  you,  should  be 
admitted,  on  the  strength  of  their  moral  and  intellectual 
qualities  alone,  to  exercise  a  voice  in  the  legislature  of  the 
country.  Could  I  suppose  for  a  moment  that  you  deemed 
that  portion  of  these  very  men  which  falls  to  the  share  of 
Scotland  unfitted  to  exercise  a  voice  in  the  election  of  a 
parish  minister?  or,  rather,  —  fori  understate  the  case, — 
that  you  held  them  unworthy  of  being  emancipated  from 
the  thraldom  of  a  degrading  law,  the  remnant  of  a  bar- 
barous code,  which  conveys  them  over  by  thousands  and 
miles  square  to  the  charge  of  patronage-courting  clergy- 
men, practically  unacquainted  with  the  religion  they  pro- 
fess to  teach  ?  Surely  the  people  of  Scotland  are  not  so 
changed  but  that  they  know  at  least  as  much  of  the  doc- 
trines of  the  New  Testament  as  of  the  principles  of  civil 
government,  and  of  the  requisites  of  a  gospel  minister  as 
of  the  qualifications  of  a  member  of  Parliament! 

You  have  decided  against  us,  my  lord.     You  have  even 


22  LETTER   TO    LORD    BROUGHAM. 

said  that  we  had  better  rest  contented  with  the  existing 
statutes,  as  interpreted  by  your  lordship,  than  involve 
ourselves  in  the  dangers  and  difficulties  of  a  new  enact- 
ment. Nay,  more  wonderful  still,  all  your  sympathies 
on  the  occasion  seem  to  have  been  reserved  for  the  times 
and  the  memory  of  men  who  first  imparted  its  practical 
efficiency  to  a  law  under  which  we  and  our  fathers  have 
groaned,  and  which  we  have  ever  regarded  as  not  only 
subversive  of  our  natural  rights  as  men,  but  of  our  well- 
being  as  Christians.  Highly  as  your  lordship  estimates 
our  political  wisdom,  yoii  have  no  opinion  whatever  of  our 
religious  taste  and  knowledge.  Is  it  at  all  possible  that 
you,  my  lord,  a  native  of  Scotland,  and  possessed  of  more 
general  information  than  perhaps  any  other  man  living, 
can  have  yet  to  learn  that  we  have  thought  long  and 
deeply  of  our  religion,  whereas  our  political  speculations 
began  but  yesterday ;  that  our  popular  struggles  have 
been  struggles  for  the  right  of  worshipping  God  according 
to  the  dictates  of  our  conscience,  and  under  the  guidance 
of  ministers  of  our  own  choice;  and  that,  when  anxiously 
employed  in  finding  arguments  by  which  rights  so  dear  to 
us  might  be  rationally  defended,  our  discovery  of  the  prin- 
ciples of  civil  liberty  was  merely  a  sort  of  chance-conse- 
quence of  the  search?  Examine  yourself,  my  lord.  Is 
your  mind  free  from  all  bias  in  this  matter?  Are  you 
quite  assured  that  your  admiration  of  an  illustrious  rela- 
tive, at  a  period  when  your  judgment  was  comparatively 
uninformed,  has  not  had  the  efiect  of  rendering  his  opinions 
your  prejudices?  Principal  Robertson  was  unquestionably 
a  great  man  ;  but  consider  in  what  way :  great  as  a  leader, 
—  not  as  a  "father  in  the  Church," — it  is  not  to  ministers 
such  as  the  Principal  that  the  excellent  among  my  coun- 
trymen look  up  for  spiritual  guidance  amid  tfre  temptations 
and  difficulties  of  life,  or  for  comfort  at  its  close ;  great  in 
literature,  —  not,  like  Timothy  of  old,  great  in  his  knowl- 
edge of  the  Scriptures,  —  aged  men  who  sat  under  his 
ministry  have  assured  me  that,  in  hurrying  over  the  New 


LETTER    TO    LORD    BROUGHAM.  28 

Testament,  he  had  missed  the  doctrine  of  the  atonement ; 
great  as  an  author  and  a  man  of  genius,  —  great  in  his 
enduring  labors  as  a  historian,  —  great  in  the  sense  in 
which  Hume,  and  Gibbon,  and  Voltaire  were  great.^  But 
who  can  regard  the  greatness  of  such  men  as  a  sufficient 
guarantee  for  the  soundness  of  the  opinions  wliich  they 
have  held,  or  the  justice  or  wisdom  of  the  measures  which 
they  have  recommended?  The  law  of  patronage  is  in  no 
degree  the  less  cruel  or  absurd  from  its  having  owed  its 
reenactment  to  so  great  a  statesman  and  so  ingenious  a 
writer  as  Bolingbroke ;  nor  yet  from  its  having  received 
its  full  and  practical  efficiency  from  so  masterly  a  historian 
and  so  thorough  a  judge  of  human  affiiirs  as  Robertson  ; 
nor  yet,  my  lord,  from  the  new  vigor  which  it  has  received 
from  the  decision  of  so  profound  a  philosopher  and  so 
accomplished  an  orator  as  Brougham. 

I  am  a  plain,  untaught  man ;  but  the  opinions  which  I 
hold  regarding  the  law  of  patronage  are  those  entertained 
by  the  great  bulk  of  my  countrymen,  and  entitled  on  that 
account  to  some  little  respect.  I  shall  state  them  as  clearly 
and  as  simply  as  I  can.    You  are  doubtless  acquainted  with 


1  Is  the  writer's  estimate  of  Dr.  Eobertson's  religious  character  too  low? 
Take,  then,  the  estimate  of  William  Wilberiorce  —  a  name  to  which  even  the 
high  eulogiums^  of  Lord  Brougham  can  add  nothing.  In  the  "  Practical  View," 
chapter  vi.,  thei'e  occurs  the  following  passage: 

"  It  has  also  been  a  melancholy  prognostic  of  the  state  to  which  we  are  pro- 
gressive, that  many  of  the  most  eminent  literati  of  modern  times  have  been 
professed  unbelievers;  ancf  that  others  of  them  have  discovered  such  lukewarm- 
ness  in  the  cause  of  Christ  as  to  treat  with  esjiecial  good-will,  and  attention,  and 
respect,  those  men  who,  by  their  avowed  publications,  were  openly  assailing,  or 
insidiously  undermining,  the  very  foundations  of  the  Christian  hope  —  consid- 
ering themselves  as  more  closely  united  to  them  by  literature  than  severed  from 
them  by  tlie  widest  religious  differences.  It  is  with  pain  that  the  author  finds 
himself  compelled  to  place  so  great  a  writer  as  Dr.  Robertson  in  this  class.  But, 
to  say  nothing  of  his  plilegmatic  account  of  the  Reformation  (a  subject  which 
we  should  have  thought  likely  to  excite  in  any  one  who  united  the  character  of 
a  Christian  divine  with  that  of  a  historian,  some  warmth  of  pious  gratitude  for 
the  good  providence  of  God), —to  pass  over,  also,  the  ambiguity  in  which  he 
leaves  his  readers  as  to  his  opinion  of  the  authenticity  of  the  Mosaic  chronology, 
in  his  Disquisitions  on  tlie  Trade  of  India, —  his  letters  to  Mr.  Gibbon,  lately 
published,  cannot  but  excite  emotions  of  regret  and  shame  in  every  sincere 
Christian."  — Page  304,  fifth  edition. 


24  LETTER   TO    LORD    BROUGHAM. 

that  beautiful  little  piece  of  antique  simplicity,  drawn  up 
by  Knox,  on  the  election  of  elders  and  deacons.  It  forms 
an  interesting  record,  by  an  eye-witness,  of  the  earliest 
beginnings  of  reformation  in  Scotland.  At  first,  pious 
individuals,  "brought,  through  the  wonderful  grace  of  God, 
to  a  knowledge  of  the  truth,  began  to  exercise  themselves 
by  reading  of  the  Scriptures  secretly,"  and  to  call  the 
members  of  their  own  households  around  them  to  join 
with  them  in  prayer.  In  the  next  stage  a  few  neighboring 
families  of  this  character  learned  to  assemble  themselves 
together  to  pray  and  to  exhort,  sometimes  under  the  cloud 
of  night  in  houses,  sometimes  in  lone  and  sequestered  hol- 
lows in  the  fields.  Their  numbers  gradually  increased,  and 
that  diversity  of  talent  so  characteristic  of  the  human 
fiimily,  and  so  nicely  adapted  to  man's  social  nature,  began 
to  manifest  itself  in  this  first  germ  of  the  Reformed  Church 
in  Scotland.  To  assign  to  individuals  among  them  by  the 
general  voice  that  place  for  which  nature  and  the  Holy 
Spirit  had  peculiarly  fitted  them,  was  but  a  giving  of  effect, 
through  the  agency  of  man,  to  the  will  of  God,  and  essen- 
tially necessary  for  the  maintenance  of  decency  and  good 
order.  "And  so  began  that  small  flock,"  says  the  reformer, 
"to  put  themselves  in  such  order  as  if  Christ  Jesus  had 
plainly  triumphed  in  the  midst  of  them  by  the  power  of 
the  Evangel ;  and  they  did  elect  some  to  occupy  the  supreme 
place  of  exhortation  and  reading,  and  some  to  be  elders 
and  helpers  to  these  for  the  oversight  of  the  flock,  and 
some  to  be  deacons  for  the  collection  of  alms  to  be  dis- 
tributed to  the  poor  of  their  own  body.  And  of  this  small 
beginning  is  that  order  that  now  God,  of  his  mercy,  hath 
given  unto  us  publicly  within  this  realm." 

One  stage  more,  and  the  history  is  complete.  The 
devotions  of  the  closet  had  passed  into  the  family ;  the 
members  of  Christianized  families  had  formed  themselves 
into  a  church.  But  this  process  of  germination  and  growth 
had  not  been  confined  to  a  single  locality.  The  long  win- 
ter was  over;  the  vital  principle  was  heaving  under  the 


LETTER    TO    LORD    BROUGHAM.  25 

clods  of  separate  fields  and  widely  distant  valleys  ;  the  deep 
sleep  of  ages  had  been  broken ;  the  day-star  had  arisen ; 
the  Spirit  of  God  had  moved  upon  the  face  of  the  waters ; 
many  families  had  been  enlightened  —  many  churches  had 
been  formed.  How  was  "  the  bond  of  unity  "  to  be  best 
jDreserved,  and  wise  and  equal  laws  established  for  the 
good  of  the  whole?  "  Wisdom,"  saith  the  Saviour,  "  is  jus- 
tified of  her  children."  The  churches  instructed  their  best 
and  wisest  to  deliberate  in  council,  —  their  learned  and 
strong-minded,  their  tried  and  venerable  men,  whom  they 
had  chosen  to  be  their  guides  and  leaders,  because  God  had 
chosen  them  first;  and  these  met  in  assembly,  each  recog- 
nizing in  each  an  equal  and  a  brother,  and  in  Christ  the 
Head  and  Governor  of  the  whole.  The  Scriptures  were 
opened,  that  the  "mind  of  God"  might  be  known.  They 
sought  advice  of  the  Reformed  Churches  abroad ;  con- 
ferred with  princes  and  magistrates  at  home ;  enacted  wise 
laws ;  drew  up  books  of  order  and  of  discipline  ;  framed 
Catechisms  and  Confessions  of  Faith.  The  God  in  whom 
they  trusted  breathed  a  spirit  of  wisdom  into  their  coun- 
sels; and  the  inestimable  blessings  of  a  pure  and  scriptural 
religion  were  thus  secured  to  our  land.  Is  the  picture 
faithfully  drawn  ?  Look  at  it,  my  lord.  The  Presbyterians 
of  Scotland  deem  it  a  picture  of  their  Church  in  her  best 
estate;  and  believe  that  the  one  great  object  of  her  saints 
and  martyrs  in  all  their  struggles  with  kings  and  patrons, 
priests  and  curates,  leaders  in  the  General  Assembly  and 
dragoons  on  the  hill-side,  has  been  to  restore  what  of  the 
original  likeness  had  been  lost,  or  to  preserve  what  had 
been  retained. 

Now,  with  many  thousands  of  my  countrymen,  I  have 
been  accustomed  to  ask.  Where  is  the  place  which  patron- 
age occupies  in  this  Church  of  the  people  and  of  Christ? 
I  read  in  the  First  Book  of  Discipline  (as  drawn  up  by 
Knox  and  his  brethren)  that  "no  man  should  enter  the 
ministry  without  a  lawful  vocation  ;  and  that  a  lawful 
vocation  standeth  in  the  election  of  the  people^  examination 

3 


26  LETTER    TO    LORD    BROUGHAM. 

of  the  ministry,  and  admission  by  them  both."  I  find  in 
the  Second  Book,  as  sanctioned  by  our  earlier  Assemblies, 
and  sworn  to  in  our  National  Covenant,  that  as  this  liberty 
of  election  was  observed  and  respected  so  long  as  the 
primitive  Church  maintained  its  purity,  it  should  be  also 
observed  and  respected  by  the  Reformed  Church  of  Scot- 
land; and  that  neither  by  the  king  himself,  nor  by  any 
inferior  person,  should  ministers  be  intruded  on  congrega- 
tions contrary  to  the  will  of  the  people.  I  find  patronage 
mentioned  in  this  Second  Book  for  the  first  time,  and  men- 
tioned only  to  be  denounced  as  "an  abuse  flowing  from  the 
Pope  and  the  corruption  of  the  canon  law,"  and  as  contrary 
to  the  liberty  of  election,  the  light  of  reformation,  the  word 
of  God.  Where  is  the  flaw  in  our  logic  when  we  infer 
that  the  members  of  our  Church  constitute  our  Church, 
and  that  it  is  the  part  and  right  of  these  members  in  their 
collective  capacity  to  elect  their  ministers  ?  I,  my  lord, 
am  an  integral  part  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  and  of 
such  integral  parts,  and  of  nothing  else,  is  the  body  of  this 
Church  composed;  nor  do  we  look  to  the  high  places  of 
the  earth  when  w^e  address  ourselves  to  its  adorable  Head. 
The  Earl  of  Kinnoull  is  not  the  Church,  nor  any  of  the 
other  patrons  of  Scotland.  Why,  then,  are  these  men 
suflered  to  exercise,  and  that  so  exclusively,  one  of  the 
Church's  most  sacred  privileges?  You  tell  us  of  "existing 
institutions,  vested  rights,  positive  interests."  Do  we  not 
know  that  the  slaveholders,  who  have  so  long  and  so  stub- 
boinly  withstood  your  lordship's  truly  noble  appeals  in 
behalf  of  the  African  bondsmen,  have  been  employing  an 
exactly  similar  language  for  the  last  fifty  years ;  and  that 
the  onward  progress  of  man  to  the  high  place  which  God 
has  willed  him  to  occupy  has  been  impeded  at  every  step 
by  "  existing  institutions,  vested  rights,  positive  interests  "  ? 
My  grandfather  was  a  grown  man  at  a  period  when  the 
neighboring  proprietor  could  have  dragged  him  from  his 
cottage,  and  hung  him  up  on  the  gallows-hill  of  the  barony. 
It  is  not  yet  a  century  since  the  colliers  of  our  southern 


LETTER   TO   LORD    BROUGHAM.  27 

districts  were  serfe  bound  to  the  soil.  The  mischievous 
and  intolerant  law  of  patronage  still  presses  its  dead  weight 
on  our  consciences.  But  what  of  all  that,  my  lord  ?  Is  it 
not  in  accordance  with  the  high  destiny  of  the  species  that 
the  fit  and  the  right  should  triumph  over  the  established  ? 

It  is  impossible  your  lordship  can  hold,  with  men  of  a 
lower  order,  that  there  is  any  necessary  connection  between 
the  law  of  patronage  and  our  existence  as  an  Establishment. 
The  public  money  can  only  be  legitimately  employed  in 
furthering  the  public  good  ;  and  we  recognize  the  improve- 
ment and  conservation  of  the  morals  of  the  people  as  the 
sole  condition  on  which  our  ministers  receive  the  support 
of  the  state.  Where  is  the  inevitable  connection  between 
rights  of  patronage  (which,  as  the  law  now  exists,  may  be 
exercised  by  fools,  debauchees,  infidels)  and  principles  such 
as  these?  Nay,  what  is  there  subversive  of  such  principles 
in  a  Christian  liberty  of  election  as  complete  as  that  en- 
joyed of  old  by  the  first  fathers  of  the  Reformation,  or 
exercised  in  the  present  day  by  our  Protestant  Dissenters? 
I  may  surely  add,  that  what  is  good  for  the  Dissenters  in 
this  matter  cannot  be  very  bad  for  us ;  that  I  can  find  none 
of  the  much-dreaded  evils  of  popular  election  —  the  divi- 
sions, the  heart-burnings,  the  endless  lawsuits,  the  domi- 
nancy  of  the  fanatical  spirit — exemplified  in  them;  and 
that  there  can  surely  be  little  to  censure  in  a  principle 
which  could  have  secured  to  them  the  labors  of  such  min- 
isters as  Baxter  and  Banyan,  Watts  and  Doddridge,  Robert 
Hall,  and  Thomas  M'Crie.  Even  you  yourself,  my  lord, 
will  hardly  venture  to  assert  that  our  Scottish  patrons 
could  have  provided  them  with  better  or  more  useful  cler- 
gymen than  they  have  been  enabled  to  choose  for  them- 
selves. 

But  on  these  points  we  are  not  at  issue  with  your  lord- 
ship. You  tell  us,  however,  that  we  are  protected  against 
the  abuses  of  patronage  by  the  provision  that  patrons  can 
present  only  qualified  persons,  —  clergymen  whose  litera- 
ture the  Church  has  pi'onounced  sufficient,  and  their  morals 


28  LETTER   TO   LORD    BROUGHAM. 

not  bad.  And  when,  under  the  suspension  of  our  higher 
privileges,  we  challenge  for  ourselves  the  right  of  rejecting 
ministers  thus  selected  tcithoiit  assigning  our  reasons^  you 
ungenerously  insinuate  that  we  are  perhaps  anxious  to 
employ  this  liberty  in  the  rejection  of  good  men,  too  strict 
in  morals,  and  too  diligent  in  duty  to  please  oor  vitiated 
tastes.  "  Have  a  care,  my  lord."  You  are  a  philosopher 
of  the  inductive  school.  Look  well  to  your  facts.  Put 
our  lives  to  the  question.  Ascertain  whether  we  are  im- 
moral in  the  proportion  in  which  we  are  zealous  for  this 
privilege ;  determine  whether  our  clergymen  are  lax  and 
time-serving  in  the  degree  in  which  they  are  popular;  and 
see,  I  beseech  your  lordship,  that  the  scrutiny  be  strict. 
We  challenge,  as  our  right,  liberty  of  rejection  without 
statement  of  reasons.  What  is  there  so  absurd  in  this  as  to 
provoke  ridicule?  or  what  so  unfiir  as  to  justify  the  impu- 
tation of  sinister  design  ?  It  is  positive.,  not  negative^  char- 
acter we  expect  in  a  clergyman.  We  are  suspicious  of  the 
^'•not  proveyi  ;^''  we  are  dissatisfied  with  even  the  "  ;io^ 
guilty : "  we  look  in  him  for  qualities  which  Ave  can  love, 
powers  which  we  can  respect,  graces  which  we  can  revere. 
It  matters  not  that  we  should  have  no  grounds  on  which 
to  condemn:  we  are  justified  in  our  rejection  if  we  can- 
not approve. 

But  we  are  aware,  my  lord,  that  there  is  a  noiseless 
though  powerful  under-current  of  objection,  which  bears 
more  heavily  against  us  in  this  matter  than  all  the  thousand 
lesser  tides  that  froth  and  bubble  on  the  surface.  We  are 
opposed  by  the  prejudices  of  a  powerful  party,  who  see  an 
inevitable  connection  between  the  exercise  of  the  popular 
voice  and  what  I  shall  venture  to  define  for  them  as  a  fa- 
naticism according  to  the  standards  of  our  Church.  We 
have  but  one  Bible  and  one  Confession  of  Faith  in  our 
Scottish  Establishment;  but  we  have  two  religions  in  it; 
and  these,  though  they  bear  exactly  the  same  name,  and 
speak  nearly  the  same  language,  are  yet  fundamentally  and 
vitally  different.     They  belong,  in  fact,  to  the  two  very 


LETTER   TO    LORD    BROUGHAM.  29 

Opposite  classes  into  which  all  religions  naturally  divide. 
The  one  is  popular,  and  has  ever  contended  for  the  infu- 
sion of  the  popular  principle  into  the  Church  as  a  necessary- 
element  ;  the  other  is  exclusive,  and  has  as  determinedly 
struggled  against  it.  The  Logans,  Homes,  Blairs,  Robert- 
sons, of  the  last  age,  may  be  regarded  as  constituting  the 
fit  representatives  of  the  latter  class.  The  other  recog- 
nizes its  master  spirits  —  its  beloved  and  much  honored 
leaders  —  in  our  Thomsons  and  Chalmerses,  our  Knoxes 
and  Melvilles,  the  flxthers  of  the  Secession,  and  the  cham- 
pions of  the  Covenant.  The  infusion  of  the  popular  prin- 
ciple, while  it  would  mightily  strengthen  the  one  class, 
would  assuredly  diminish,  if  not  altogether  annihilate,  the 
other ;  and  while  the  thousands  which  form  the  one  reckon 
on  it  as  their  friend,  the  hundreds  which  compose  the  other 
hate  and  oppose  it  as  their  enemy. 

Now,  there  are  important,  though  perhaps  somewhat 
occult,  principles  couched  in  this  circumstance,  regarding 
which  your  lordship's  opinion,  as  a  philosopher,  would  be 
of  great  value,  had  you  not  already  foreclosed  the  question 
in  a  very  diSerent  character  indeed.  It  will  be  found  that 
all  the  false  religions  of  past  or  of  present  times,  which 
have  abused  the  credulity  or  flattered  the  judgments  of 
men,  may  be  divided  into  two  grand  classes,  —  the  natural 
and  the  artificial.  The  natural  religions  are  wild  and 
extravagant ;  and  the  enlightened  reason,  when  unbiassed 
by  the  influence  of  early  prejudice,  rejects  them  as  mon- 
strous and  profane.  But  they  have  unquestionably  a  strong 
hold  on  human  nature,  and  exert  a  powerful  control  over 
its  hopes  and  its  fears.  They  are,  like  the  oak  or  the  chest- 
nut, the  slow  growth  of  centuries ;  their  first  beginnings 
are  lost  in  the  uncertainty  of  the  fabulous  ages,  and  every 
addition  they  receive  is  fitted  to  the  credulity  of  the  pop- 
ular mind  ere  it  can  assimilate  itself  to  the  mass.  The 
grand  cause  of  their  popularity,  however,  seems  to  consist 
in  the  human  character  of  their  gods;  for  is  it  not  accord- 

3* 


80  LETTER    TO    LORD    BROUGHAM. 

ino:  to  the  nature  of  man  as  a  religjious  creature  that  he 
meet  with  an  answering  nature  in  Deity? 

The  artificial  religions,  on  the  other  hand,  are  exclusively 
the  work  of  the  human  reason,  and  the  God  with  which 
they  profess  to  acquaint  us  is  a  mere  abstract  idea,  —  an 
incomprehensible  essence  of  goodness,  power,  and  wisdom. 
The  understanding  cannot  conceive  of  him  except  as  a 
first  great  cause  —  as  the  mysterious  source  and  originator 
of  all  things ;  and  it  is  surely  according  to  reason  that  he 
should  be  thus  removed  from  that  lower  sphere  of  con- 
ception which  even  finite  intelligences  can  occupy  to  the 
full.  But  in  thus  rendering  him  intangible  to  the  under- 
standing, he  is  rendered  intangible  to  the  affections  also. 
Who  ever  loved  an  abstract  idea,  or  what  sympathy  can 
exist  between  human  minds  and  an  intelligent  essence 
infinitely  diffused?  And  hence  the  cold  and  barren  inef- 
ficiency of  artificial  religions.  They  want  the  vitality  of 
life.  They  want  the  grand  principle  of  motive ;  for  they 
can  lay  no  hold  on  those  affections  to  which  this  prime 
mover  in  all  human  affairs  can  alone  address  itself.  They 
may  look  well  in  a  discourse  or  an  essay ;  for,  like  all 
human  inventions,  they  may  be  easily  understood  and 
plausibly  defended ;  but  they  are  totally  unsuited  to  the 
nature  and  the  wants  of  man. 

Now,  is  it  not  according  to  reason  and  analogy  that  the 
true  religion  should  be  formed,  if  I  may  so  express  myself, 
on  a  popular  principle  ?  Is  it  not  indispensable  that  the 
religion  which  God  reveals  should  be  suited  to  the  human 
nature  which  God  has  made  ?  Artificial  religions,  with  all 
their  minute  rationalities,  are  not  suited  to  it  at  all,  and  there- 
fore take  no  hold  on  the  popular  mind ;  natural  religions, 
with  all  their  immense  popularity,  are  not  suited  to  improve 
it.  It  is  Christianity  alone  which  unites  the  popularity  of 
the  one  class  w^ith  the  rationality  and  more  than  the  purity 
of  the  other  —  that  gives  to  Deity,  as  the  man  Christ  Jesus, 
his  strong  hold  on  the  human  affections,  and  restores  to 


LETTER   TO    LORD   BROUGHAM.  31 

him,  in  his  abstract  character  as  Father  of  all,  the  homngG 
of  the  understanding. 

Question  the  principle  as  you  please,  but  look,  I  beseech 
you,  to  the  fact.  Who  was  that  most  popular  of  all 
preachers,  whom  the  immense  multitudes  of  Judea  fol- 
lowed into  waste  and  solitary  places,  and  of  whom  it  is 
so  expressly  told  that  the  "common  people  heard  him 
gladly"?  And  what  the  religion  taught  by  the  twelve 
unlettered  men,  whose  labors  revolutionized  the  morals 
of  the  world?  Christianity,  in  its  primitive  integrity,  is 
essentially  a  popular  religion ;  and  what  we  complain  of 
in  the  Churchmen  opposed  to  the  popular  voice  is,  that 
they  have  divested  it  of  this  vital  principle.  What  God 
has  done  in  the  framing  of  it  they  undo  in  the  preaching 
of  it;  they  impart  to  it  all  the  cold  inefficacy  of  an  arti- 
ficial religion  ;  they  tell  us  well-nigh  as  much  of  the  beauty 
of  virtue  as  Plato  could  have  done;  of  the  incarnation  or 
the  atonement  they  tell  us  well-nigh  as  little,  or  tell  as 
if  they  told  it  not;  and  what  wonder  if  they  should  be 
left  to  exhibit  their  minute  and  feeble  rationalities  to  bare 
walls  and  empty  benches,  and  to  dread  in  the  popular 
principle  the  ©nemy  which  is  eventually  to  cast  them  out 
of  the  Church  ?  We  are  acquainted  with  our  New  Testa- 
ments, and  demand  that  our  ministers  give  that  prominence 
and  space  to  the  peculiar  doctrines  of  Christianity  which 
we  find  assigned  to  them  in  the  epistles  of  Paul  and  of 
Peter,  of  James  and  of  John. 

I  have  striven,  my  lord,  to  acquaint  myself  Avith  the 
history  of  my  Church.  I  have  met  with  a  few  old  books, 
and  have  found  time  to  read  them ;  and,  as  the  histories 
of  Knox,  Calderwood,  and  Wodrow  have  been  among  the 
number,  I  do  not  find  myself  much  at  the  mercy  of  any 
man  on  questions  connected  with  our  ecclesiastical  institu- 
tions, or  the  spirit  which  animated  them.  Some  of  the 
institutions  themselves  are  marked  by  the  character  of  the 
age  in  which  they  were  produced ;  for  we  must  not  forget 
that  the  principles  of  toleration  are  as  much  the  discovery 


32  LETTER   TO   LORD   BROUGHAM. 

of  a  later  time  as  those  principles  on  which  we  construct 
our  steam-engines.  But  the  spirit  which  lived  and  breathed 
in  them  was  essentially  that  "spirit  with  which  Christ 
maketh  his  people  free."  Nay,  the  very  intolerance  of  our 
Church  was  of  a  kind  which  delighted  to  arm  its  vassals 
with  a  power  before  which  all  tyranny,  civil  or  ecclesias- 
tical, must  eventually  be  overthrown.  It  compelled  them 
to  quit  the  lower  levels  of  our  nature  for  the  higher.  It 
demanded  of  them  that  they  should  be  no  longer  immoral 
or  illiterate.  It  was  the  Reformed  Church  of  Scotland 
that  gave  the  first  example  of  providing  that  the  children 
of  the  poor  should  be  educated  at  the  expense  of  the  state. 
Not  Henry  Brougham  himself  could  have  been  more  zeal- 
ous in  sending  the  schoolmaster  abroad.  But  ignorance, 
superstition,  immorality,  above  all,  an  intolerance  of  an 
entirely  opposite  character,  jealous  of  the  knowledge  and 
indifferent  to  the  good  of  its  vassals,  were  by  much  too 
strong  for  it ;  and  there  were  times  when  the  Church  could 
do  little  more  than  testify  against  the  grinding  tyranny 
which  oppressed  her,  and  to  the  truth  and  justice  of  her 
own  principles  ;  and  not  even  this  with  impunity.  I  have 
perused,  by  the  light  of  the  evening  fire,  whole  volumes 
filled  with  the  death-testimonies  of  her  martyrs.  Point 
me  out  any  one  abuse,  my  lord,  against  which  she  has 
testified  oftener  or  more  strongly  than  that  of  patronage, 
or  any  one  privilege  for  which  she  has  contended  with  a 
more  enduring  zeal  than  that  for  which  our  General  As- 
sembly is  contending  at  this  day.  Moulding  her  claims 
according  to  the  form  and  pressure  of  the  opposition  from 
without,  —  casting  them  at  one  time  into  a  positive,  at 
another  into  a  negative  form,  —  asserting  at  one  time  a 
free  election^  at  another  a  non-intrusion  princijyle,  —  we 
find  her,  on  this  great  question,  perseveringly  firm  and 
invariably  consistent;  and  we  regard  the  abolition  of  pat- 
ronage, and  the  recognition  of  the  popular  right,  as  entirely 
a  consequence  of  that  dominancy  of  just  and  generous 
princijDle  which  was  in  part  a  cause  and  in  part  an  effect 


LETTER  TO  LORD  BROUGHAM.  33 

of  the  Revolution,  as  we  do  any  of  the  other  great  liberties 
which  the  Revolution  has  secured  to  us  ;  nor  does  the  very- 
opposite  opinion  expressed  by  your  lordship  weigh  more 
with  us  in  this  matter  than  if  it  had  proceeded  from  the 
l^uniest  sophist  that  ever  opposed  himself  to  the  spread  of 
education  or  the  emancipation  of  the  slave. 

Twenty-one  years  joassed,  during  which  the  Church,  in 
the  undisputed  possession  of  her  hard-earned  privileges, 
was  slowly  recovering  from  the  state  of  weakness  and 
exhaustion  induced  by  her  sufferings  in  the  previous 
period.  And  well  and  wisely  were  these  privileges  em- 
ployed. Differences  inevitably  occur  wherever  man  enjoys 
the  blessings  of  liberty,  civil  or  ecclesiastical;  but  during 
these  twenty-one  years  there  were  few  heats  or  divisions, 
and  no  schisms,  in  the  Scottish  Church.  Such,  at  least,  is 
the  view  of  the  matter  given  us  in  that  life  of  Wodrow 
affixed  to  the  late  edition  of  liis  history ;  and  sure  I  am 
that  it  tenders  its  information  in  a  better  spirit  than  that 
of  any  of  the  acts  of  Parliament  which  disgraced  the  latter 
years  of  Queen  Anne.  But  a  time  had  arrived  in  which  no 
privilege  was  to  be  respected  for  its  justice,  or  spared  for 
its  popularity,  and  in  which  our  governors  were  to  pursue 
other  and  far  different  objects  than  the  good  of  the  people 
or  the  peace  of  the  Churcli.  The  Union  had  sunk  the 
Presbyterian  representation  of  Scotland  into  a  feeble  and 
singularly  inefficient  minority.  Toryism,  in  its  worst  form, 
acquired  an  overpowering  ascendency  in  the  councils  of 
the  nation  ;  Bolingbroke  engaged  in  his  deep-laid  con- 
spiracy against  the  Protestant  succession  and  our  popular 
liberties  ;  and  the  law  of  patronage  was  again  established. 
But  why  established  ?  '  On  this  important  point  your  lord- 
ship's great  historical  knowledge  seems  to  have  deserted 
you  at  once ;  there  was  a  total  lapse  of  memory,  and  all 
that  remained  for  your  lordship,  in  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  the  case,  was  just  to  take  the  law's  own  word 
for  tlie  goodness  of  the  law's  own  character.  Was  it  not 
sufficiently  fortunate  in  its  historians?     Smollett,  ere  he 


84  LETTER   TO   LORD   BROUGHAM. 

composed  his  English  History,  had  abandoned  his  whig 
principles ;  Burnet  was  an  Episcopalian  and  a  bishop ;  Sir 
"Walter  Scott  a  staunch  tory,  and  full  of  the  predilections 
and  antipathies  of  his  party.  Bat  all  the  three,  my  lord, 
were  honest  and  honorable  men.  Smollett  would  have 
told  your  lordship  of  the  peculiarly  sinister  spirit  wdiich 
animated  the  last  Parliament  of  Anne ;  of  feelings  adverse 
to  the  cause  of  freedom  which  prevailed  among  the  peo- 
l^le  when  it  was  chosen ;  and  that  the  act  which  reestab- 
lished patronage  was  but  one  of  a  series,  all  bearing  on  an 
object  which  the  honest  Scotch  member,  who  signified  his 
willingness  to  acquiesce  in  one  of  these  on  condition  that 
it  should  be  designated  by  its  right  name,  —  An  Act  for 
the  Encouragement  of  Immorality  and  Jacobitism  in 
Scotland^  —  seems  to  have  discovered.  The  worthy  Bishop 
is  still  more  decided.  Instead  of  triumphing  on  the  occa- 
sion, he  solemnly  assures  us  that  the  thing  was  done 
merely  "  to  spite  the  Presbyterians,  who  from  the  beginning 
had  set  it  up  as  a  principle  that  parishes  had,  from  war- 
rants in  Scripture,  a  right  to  choose  their  ministers,"  and 
"  who  saw,  with  great  alarm,  the  success  of  a  motion  made 
on  design  to  weaken  and  undermine  their  Establishment;" 
and  the  good  Sir  Walter,  notwithstanding  all  his  tory 
prejudices,  is  quite  as  candid.  He  tells  us  that  Jacobitism 
prevailed  in  Scotland  more  among  the  upper  than  the 
lower  classes;  and  that  "the  act  which  restored  to  patrons 
the  right  of  presenting  clergymen  to  vacant  churches  was 
designed  to  render  the  Churchmen  more  dependent  on  the 
aristocracy,  and  to  separate  them  in  some  degree  from 
their  congregations,  who  could  not  be  supposed  to  be 
equally  attached  to  or  influenced  by  a  minister  who  held 
his  living  by  the  gift  of  a  great  man,  as  by  one  who  was 
chosen  by  their  own  free  voice."  You  see  your  lordship 
might  have  learned  a  little,  even  from  writers  such  as 
these.  Historical  evidence  is  often  of  a  vague  and  inde- 
terminate character;  there  are  disputed  questions  of  fact 
which  divide  the  probabilities  in  directions  diametrically 


LETTER   TO   LORD   BROUGHAM.  35 

opposite ;  but  on  the  question  before  us  it  is  comparatively- 
easy  to  decide.  The  law  which  reestablished  patronage  in 
Scotland,  which  has  rendered  Christianity  inefficient  in 
well-nigh  half  her  joarishes,  which  has  separated  some 
of  her  better  clergymen  from  her  Church,  and  many  of  her 
better  people  from  her  clergymen  —  the  law  through  which 
Robertson  ruled  in  the  General  Assembly,  and  which 
Brougham  has  eulogized  in  the  House  of  Lords,  —  that 
identical  law  formed,  in  its  first  enactment,  no  unessential 
portion  of  a  deep  and  dangerous  conspiracy  against  the 
liberties  of  our  country. 

There  is,  my  lord,  a  statesman  of  the  present  day,  quite 
as  eminent  as  Bolingbroke,  who  is  acting,  it  is  said,  a 
somewhat  similar  part.  It  is  whispered  that  not  only  can 
he  decide  according  to  an  unpopular  and  unjust  law,  which 
he  secretly  condemns,  but  that  he  can  also  praise  it  as 
good  and  wise,  and  stir  up  its  friends  (men  of  a  much 
narrower  range  of  vision  than  himself)  to  give  it  full  force 
and  efficacy;  and  all  this  with  the  direct  view  of  destroy- 
ing a  venerable  institution  on  which  this  law  acts.  Now, 
I  cannot  credit  the  insinuation,  for  I  believe  that  the  very 
able  statesman  alluded  to  is  an  honest  man  ;  but  I  think 
I  can  see  how  he  tnight  act  such  a  part,  and  act  it  with 
very  great  effect.  At  no  previous  period  were  the  popular 
energies  so  powerfully  developed  as  in  the  present ;  at  no 
former  time  was  it  so  essentially  necessary  that  institutions 
which  desire  to  live  should  open  themselves  to  the  infusion 
of  the  popular  principle.  Shut  them  up  in  their  old  chrys- 
alis state  from  this  new  atmosphere  of  life,  and  they 
inevitably  perish.  And  these,  my  lord,  are  truths  which  I 
can  more  than  see  —  I  can  also  feel  them.  I  am  one  of 
the  people,  full  of  the  popular  sympathies  —  it  may  be, 
of  the  popular  prejudices.  To  no  man  do  I  yield  in  the 
love  and  respect  which  I  bear  to  the  Church  of  Scotland. 
I  never  signed  the  Confession  of  her  Faith,  but  I  do  more 
—  I  believe  it;  and  I  deem  her  scheme  of  government  at 
once  the  simplest  and  most  practically  beneficial  that  has 


36  LETTER   TO    LORD    BROUGHAM. 

been  established  since  tLe  time  of  the  ai^ostles.  But  it  is 
the  vital  spirit,  not  the  dead  body,  to  which  I  am  attached; 
it  is  to  the  free  popular  Church,  established  by  our  re- 
formers, not  to  an  unsubstantial  form  or  an  empty  name, 
a  mere  creature  of  expediency  and  the  state;  and  had 
she  so  far  fallen  below  my  estimate  of  her  dignity  and 
excellence  as  to  have  acquiesced  in  your  lordship's  de- 
cision, the  leaf  holds  not  more  loosely  by  the  tree  when 
the  October  wind  blows  highest,  than  I  would  have  held 
by  a  church  so  sunk  and  degraded.  And  these,  my  lord, 
are  the  feelings,  not  merely  of  a  single  individual,  but  of  a 
class,  which,  though  less  learned,  and,  may  be,  less  wise, 
than  the  classes  above  them,  are  beyond  comparison  more 
numerous,  and  promise,  now  that  they  are  learning  to 
think,  to  become  immensely  more  powerful.  Drive  our 
better  clergymen  to  extremities  on  this  question,  —  let  but 
three  hundred  of  them  throw  up  their  livings,  as  the 
Puritans  of  England  and  the  Presbyterians  of  our  own 
country  did  in  the  times  of  Charles  II.,  —  and  the  Scottish 
Establishment  inevitably  fills.  Your  lordship  is  a  saga- 
cious and  far-seeing  man.  How  long,  think  you,  would 
the  English  Establishment  survive  her  humbler  sister? 
and  how  long  would  the  monarchy  exist  after  the  extinc- 
tion of  both  ? 

You  have  entertained  a  too  favorable  opinion  of  the 
Scottish  Church,  and  she  has  disappointed  your  expecta- 
tions. Scotland  is  up  in  rebellion  !  The  General  Assem- 
bly refuse  to  settle  Mr.  Young.  Take  your  seat,  my  lord, 
and  try  the  members  of  this  refractory  court  for  their  new 
and  unheard-of  offence.  They  believe  "  that  the  principle 
of  non-intrusion  is  coeval  with  the  existence  of  the  Church, 
and  forms  an  integral  part  of  its  constitution."  Their  con- 
sciences, too,  are  awakened  on  the  subject;  they  see  that 
forced  settlements  have  done  very  little  good,  and  a  great 
deal  of  harm ;  and  that  intruded  ministers  have  been  the 
means  of  converting  few  souls  to  Christ,  and  have,  it  is 
feared,  in  a  great  many  instances,  been  unconverted  them- 


^  LETTER   TO   LORD   BROUGHAM.  37 

selves.  They  have,  besides,  come  to  believe,  with  their 
fiithers  of  old,  that  God  himself  is  not  iudifferent  in  the 
matter,  and  are  fearful  lest  "  haply  they  should  be  found 
fighting  against  him."  And  in  this  assembly,  my  lord,  there 
are  wise  and  large-minded  men  —  men  admired  for  their 
genius,  and  revered  for  their  piety,  wherever  the  light 
of  learning  or  religion  has  yet  found  its  way.  Now,  a 
certain  law  of  the  country,  which  was  j^assed  rather  more 
than  a  hundred  and  twenty  years  ago,  through  the  influ- 
ence of  very  bad  men,  and  for  a  very  bad  purpose,  has 
demanded  that  this  assembly  proceed  forthwith  to  impose 
on  a  resisting  people  a  singularly  unpopular  clergyman. 
And  the  assembly  have  refused;  courteously  and  hum- 
bly, 'tis  true,  but  still  most  firmly.  Give  to  this  unpopular 
clergyman,  they  say,  all  the  emoluments  of  the  ofiice.  We 
lay  no  claim  to  these ;  we  have  no  right  to  them  what- 
ever; nay,  we  hold  even  our  own  livings  by  sufierance, 
and  you  have  the  power  to  take  them  from  us  whenever 
you  please.  But  we  must  not  force  this  unpopular  clergy- 
man on  the  people :  our  consciences  will  not  suffer  us  to 
do  it ;  and  as  the  laws  which  control  our  consciences 
cannot  be  altered,  whereas  those  which  govern  the  country 
are  in  a  state  of  continual  change,  suffer  us,  we  beseech 
you,  to  confer  with  the  makers  of  those  changing  laws,  that 
this  bad  law  may  be  made  so  much  better  as  to  agree  with 
the  fixed  law  of  our  consciences.  Now,  such,  my  lord,  is 
the  heinous  offence  committed  by  these  men.  You  could 
not  believe  they  were  so  wicked;  you  could  imagine  the 
crime  itself,  but  not  in  connection  with  them ;  you  said  it 
was  indecorous,  preposterous,  monstrous,  to  believe  that 
they  could  be  so  wicked.  But  you  did  ill  to  speak  of 
Christ  on  the  occasion.  It  is  against  Bolingbroke's  law, 
not  the  law  of  Christ,  that  these  men  have  offended. 

Nay,  my  lord,  you  should  have  known  the  Church  of 
Scotland  better.  Consult  her  history,  and  see  whether 
she  has  not  as  determinedly  opposed  herself  to  wicked 
laws  as  to  wicked  men.    The  very  act  which  first  indicated 

4 


88  LETTER   TO   LORD   BROUGHAM. 

her  existence  as  a  Church  was  her  opposition  to  the  law. 
And  fearfully  did  she  suffer  for  it.  The  law  persecuted 
her  children  to  death,  —  her  Patrick  Ilamiltons,  her  George 
Wisharts,  her  Walter  Mills,  —  and  scattered  their  ashes  to 
the  winds.  But  there  was  a  law  to  which  she  was  not 
opposed  —  a  fixed  and  immutable  law';  and  God  fought 
for  her,  and  she  waxed  mighty  in  the  midst  of  her  great 
suffering ;  and  at  length,  when  her  fierce  and  cruel  perse- 
cutors had  gone  to  their  place,  the  unjust  and  intolerant 
law  against  which  she  had  so  long  struggled  in  sorrow  and 
great  weakness  was  expunged  from  the  statute-book.  His- 
tory tells  me  that,  in  all  her  after  conflicts,  it  was  not  the 
Church  that  yielded  to  the  law,  but  the  law  that  yielded 
to  the  Church.  Need  I  remind  your  lordship  of  her  strug- 
gles in  the  days  of  Mary,  of  James,  of  Charles  ?  Need  I 
say  that,  subsequent  to  the  Restoration,  she  opposed  her- 
self to  the  law  for  twenty-eight  years  together ;  and  that 
the  graves  which  lie  solitary  among  our  hills,  and  the 
tombs  which  occupy  the  malefactors'  corner  in  our  public 
burying-grounds,  remain  to  testify  of  the  heavy  penalty 
which  she  paid  ?  But  the  curse  denounced  against  Cain 
of  old  fell  on  the  unrighteous  shedders  of  innocent  blood  : 
the  descendants  of  our  ancient  monarchs  became  fugitive 
and  vagabond  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  The  law  to  which 
our  Church  would  not  yield,  yielded  to  her;  and  that 
better  law  which  your  lordship  so  pointedly  condemns  as 
unworthy  of  the  Revolution,  but  which  thousands  among 
the  wise  and  good  of  my  countrymen,  and  many,  many 
thousands  of  humble  individuals  like  myself,  have  been 
accustomed  to  regard  as  so  entirely  in  its  purest  spirit, 
was  made  to  occupy  their  place.  We  do  not  think  the 
worse  of  our  Church,  my  lord,  for  her  many  contests  with 
the  law ;  not  a  whit  the  better  of  her  opposers  for  their 
having  had  the  law  on  their  side.  The  public  prosecutor 
in  the  time  of  Charles  II.  was  perhaps  as  able  a  lawyer  as 
even  your  lordship,  but  we  have  been  accustomed  to 
execrate  his  memory  as  "  the  bloody  Mackenzie." 


LETTER   TO   LORD    BROUGHAM.  89 

The  Church  has  offended  many  of  her  noblest  and  wealth- 
iest, it  is  said,  and  they  are  flying  from  her  in  crowds. 
Well,  what  matters  it?  —  let  the  chaff  fly!  We  care  not 
though  she  shake  off,  in  her  wholesome  exercise,  some  of 
the  indolent  humors  whicli  have  hung  about  her  so  long. 
The  vital  principle  will  act  with  all  the  more  vigor  when 
they  are  gone.  She  may  yet  have  to  pour  foi*th  her  life's 
blood  through  some  incurable  and  deadly  wound ;  for  do 
we  not  know  that  though  the  Church  be  eternal,  churches 
are  born  and  die?  But  the  blow  will  be  dealt  in  a  differ- 
ent quarrel,  and  on  other  and  lower  ground,  —  not  when 
her  ministers,  for  the  sake  of  the  spiritual,  lessen  their  hold 
of  the  secular;  not  when,  convinced  of  the  justice  of  the 
old  quarrel,  they  take  up  their  position  on  the  well-trodden 
battle-field  of  her  saints  and  her  martyrs  ;  not  when  they 
stand  side  by  side  with  her  j^eople,  to  contend  for  their 
common  rights,  in  accordance  with  the  dictates  of  their 
consciences,  and  agreeably  to  the  law  of  their  God.  The 
reforming  spirit  is  vigorous  within  her,  and  her  hour  is  not 
yet  come. 

I  am,  my  lord,  with  profound  respect, 
Your  lordship's  most  humble, 

Most  obedient  servant, 

HUGH    MILLER. 
Cromarty,  June,  1839. 


WHIGGISM  OF  THE  OLD  SCHOOL,  Etc. 


"  So  filled  was  my  mind  with  our  ecclesiastical  controversy,  that, 
while  yet  unacquainted  with  the  fate  of  my  first  brochure^  I  was 
busily  engaged  with  a  second."  In  these  words  Mr.  Miller  has  suf- 
ficiently indicated  the  relation  of  the  following  Essay  to  that  which 
precedes  it.  It  is  essentially  a  continuation  of  the  same  discussion ; 
the  question  of  patronage,  in  its  historical,  philosophical,  and  re- 
ligious aspect,  being  probed  in  a  manner  equally  searching,  and 
perhaps  more  deliberate  and  comprehensive.  The  absence  of  a 
personal  opponent  may  detract  somewhat  from  the  vivacity  of  the 
composition ;  but  the  place  occupied  by  Lord  Brougham  on  the  pre- 
vious occasion  is  here  partially  held  by  the  President  of  the  Court 
of  Session.  The  opinion  pronounced  by  his  lordship  against  the 
claims  of  the  Church  in  the  Lethendy  case  had  exposed  him  to  the 
particular  animadversion  of  Mr.  Miller.  —  Ed. 


One  of  the  most  important  views  of  the  Christian 
religion,  in  its  political  effects,  which  I  have  anywhere  met 
with,  is  to  be  found  in  Voltaire.  It  occm-s  in  his  "Age  of 
Louis  Xiy.,"  in  the  chapter  devoted  to  Calvinism,  and 
serves  admirably  to  show,  that  though  infidelity  owes  much 
to  a  false  philosophy,  it  has  nothing  to  hope  from  the  true. 
The  historian  tells  us,  after  descanting,  in  his  usual  style, 
on  "  the  furious  zeal,  unknown  to   paganism,"  which  first 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  41 

gave  rise  to  religious  wars,  that  he  had  often  endeavored 
to  find  out  why  the  dogmatical  spirit,  so  harmless  in  the 
schools  of  antiquity,  should  be  productive  of  so  many  dis- 
orders among  us.  Fanaticism  could  not  be  the  cause; 
men  quite  as  fanatical  as  Christians  did  harm  to  none  but 
themselves.  The  origin  of  this  "new  pest,"  he  says,  is 
rather  to  be  found  "  in  the  republican  spirit  which  animated 
the  first  churches.  Those  secret  assemblies  which,  from 
their  caves  and  recesses,  braved  the  authority  of  the  Ro- 
man emperors,  formed  by  degrees  a  state  within  a  state  — 
a  concealed  republic  within  the  empire."  But  after  Con- 
stantine  had  drawn  this  stubborn  religion  from  its  retreat 
•under  ground,  to  place  it  on  a  level  with  the  throne,  there 
was  a  gradual  softening  of  its  character.  Prosperity  im- 
parted a  new  nature  to  it.  "  The  authority  attached  to 
the  great  sees  ran  counter  to  the  popular  spirit ; "  and  in 
the  end,  so  unlike  itself  did  it  become,  that  the  powers 
which  it  had  at  first  so  determinedly  opposed  found  in  it 
eventually  one  of  their  surest  and  most  efficient  supports. 
But,  in  laying  down  its  primitive  character,  it  had  also 
relinquished  its  original  opinions;  and  no  sooner,  says  the 
historian,  were  these  revived  by  Luther,  Zuinglius,  and  Cal- 
vin, than  the  ancient  spirit  also  awoke.  The  identical 
l^rinciple  which  had  opposed  itself  so  determinedly  to  the 
tyranny  of  ancient  Rome  arose,  from  under  the  enormous 
mass  which  the  guilt  and  superstition  of  ages  had  accumu- 
lated over  it,  to  do  battle  with  the  despotisms  of  modern 
Europe.  It  opposed  itself,  though  miserably  oppressed  and 
overborne,  to  the  iron  sway  of  Mary  of  England ;  took 
up  arms  in  our  own  country  against  Mary  of  Guise  ;  con- 
tended in  France  with  the  ghostly  authority  of  kings  and 
cardinals;  and  set  limits  in  Germany  to  the  encroach- 
ments of  the  emperors. 

It  may  be  remarked  in  the  passing,  however,  that  what 
Voltaire  has  termed  the  repuhlican  spirit  of  Christianity 
is  by  no  means  exclusively  republican  ;  for,  though  it  has 
an  inevitable  tendency  to  limit  the  power  of  kings,  it  has 

4* 


42  THE  WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD   SCHOOL. 

none  whatever  to  abrogate  their  office.  On  the  contrary, 
the  just  restrictions  which  it  imposes  on  their  authority  do 
not  serve  more  as  barriers  to  confine  than  as  ramparts  to 
protect  them.  And  nothing,  surely,  can  be  more  simple 
than  the  mode  in  which  it  acts,  or  more  in  accordance  with 
the  moral  and  intellectual  dignity  of  man.  Homer  tells 
ns  that  the  day  which  makes  man  a  slave  robs  him  of  half 
his  worth:  Christianity  more  than  doubles* it.  He  wdio 
becomes  a  Christian,  becomes,  of  necessity,  subject  to  an 
immutable  and  paramount  code,  to  which  every  other  code 
must  be  subordinate  ;  his  obedience  to  kings  and  magis- 
trates becomes,  in  consequence,  a  conditional  obedience  — 
his  prince  a  limited  prince  ;  he  finds  his  subjection  to  every" 
merely  human  law  restricted  by  the  simple  but  unanswer- 
able argument  of  Peter  and  John ;  nor  must  his  oath  of 
allegiance  interfere  with  the  more  sacred  oath  which,  ac- 
cording to  Pliny,  binds  him  that  he  commit  no  evil.  What 
are  the  i^ersecutions,  whether  those  of  our  own  or  of  other 
countries,  but  just  so  many  illustrations  of  this  principle  in 
its  necessary  attitude,  —  opposed  alike  to  domination  in  the 
priest  and  to  despotism  in  the  ruler,  —  and  of  that  deadly 
and  exterminating  hatred  with  which  the  antagonist  prin- 
ciples, tyranny,  bigotry,  and  the  secular  spirit,  have  ever 
regarded  it  ?  The  entire  history  of  the  Church  is  corrobo- 
rative of  the  view  so  unwittingly  given  us  by  Voltaire ; 
and  in  none  of  its  various  sections  is  the  evidence  more 
complete  than  in  the  history  of  our  own.  There  is  a  little 
tract  by  John  Knox  —  his  "Admonition  to  his  Dearly  Be- 
loved Brethren,  the  Commonality  of  Scotland"  —  which 
is  of  itself  sufiicient  to  establish  the  point.  It  was  first 
published  in  the  year  1558  (only  two  months  after  Walter 
Miln  had  been  cruelly  put  to  death  by  the  Archbishop  of 
St.  Andrews),  and  exhibits  in  a  truly  admirable  light  the 
large  heart  and  masculine  understanding  of  its  extraordi- 
nary author.  The  truths  wdiich  it  embodies  have  since 
become  common  ;  not  so,  however,  the  power  witli  which 
these  are  enforced  ;    and  with  how  deep  and  startling  an 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  43 

effect  must  they  have  fallen  for  the  first  time  on  the  ears 
of  the  serf  and  the  vassal,  sunk  almost  below  the  level  of 
our  nature  by  a  hereditary  course  of  servitude,  that  wears 
out  the  very  mind,  and  with  well-nigh  all  their  natural 
rights  as  men  absorbed  in  the  exclusive  and  long-estab- 
lished privileges  of  their  masters.^ 


1  "Neither  would  I,"  says  the  reformer,  in  his  address  to  the  common  people, 
"  that  ye  should  esteem  the  Keformation  and  care  of  religion  less  to  appeitain  to 
you  than  to  the  rulers  and  judges  set  over  you  in  authority.  Beloved  brethren, 
ye  are  God's  creatures,  created  and  formed  to  his  own  image  and  similitude, 
for  whose  redemption  was  shed  the  most  precious  blood  of  the  only  beloved  Son 
of  God,  to  whom  he  hath  commended  his  gospel  and  glad  tidings  to  be 
preached,  and  for  whom  he  hath  prepared  the  heavenly  inheritance,  if  so  that 
you  do  not  obstinately  refuse  and  disdainfully  contemn  the  means  which  he 
hath  appointed  to  obtain  the  same,  namely,  his  blessed  gospel,  which  he  now 
otfereth  unto  you,  to  the  end  that  ye  may  be  saved.  For  the  gospel  and  glad 
tidings  of  the  kingdom,  truly  preached,  is  the  power  of  God  to  the  salvation  of 
every  true  believer.  Which  to  credit  and  recieve,  you,  the  commonality,  are  no 
less  addebted  than  are -your  rulers  and  princes;  for,  albeit  God  hath  ordained, 
distinction  and  difference  in  the  administration  of  civil  policies  betwixt  kings 
and  subjects,  rulers  and  common  people,  yet  in  the  hope  of  the  life  to  come  he 
hath  made  all  equal.  For  as  in  Christ  Jesus  the  Jew  hath  no  greater  prerogative 
than  hath  the  Gentile,  the  man  than  hath  the  woman,  the  learned  than  the  un- 
learned, the  lord  than  the  servant,  but  all  are  one  in  him,  so  is  there  but  one 
way  and  means  to  attain  to  the  participation  of  his  benefits  and  spiritual  grace, 

which  is  a  lively  faith  working  by  charity Surely,  then,  it  behooveth  you 

to  be  careful  and  diligent  in  this  so  weighty  a  matter,  lest  that  3^e,  contemning 
the  occasion  which  God  now  offereth,  find  not  the  like  again,  even  although  that 
ye  seek  after  it  with  sighings  and  tears.  And  that  ye  be  not  ignorant  of  what 
occasion  I  mean,  in  few  words  I  shall  express  it. 

"Not  only  I,  but  with  me  also  divers  godly  and  learned  men,  offer  unto  you 
our  labor,  faithfully  to  instruct  you  in  the  ways  of  the  Eternal,  our  God,  and  in 
the  sincerity  of  Christ's  gospel,  which  this  day,  by  the  pestilent  generation  of 
Antichrist,  are  almost  hid  from  the  eyes  of  men.  We  offer  to  jeopard  our  lives 
for  the  salvation  of  your  souls,  and  by  manifest  Scriptures  to  prove  that  religion 
that  amongst  you  is  maintained  by  fire  and  sword,  to  be  false,  vain,  and  diabol- 
ical. We  require  nothing  of  you  but  that  patiently  ye  will  hear  our  doctrine, 
which  is  not  ours,  but  the  doctrine  of  salvation  revealed  to  the  world  by  the  only 
Son  of  God,  and  that  ye  ivill  examine  our  reasons  by  which  we  offer  to  prove 
the  Papistical  religion  to  be  abominable  before  God;  and,  lastly,  we  require  that 
Z>y  T/owr  2J0?rer  the  tyranny  of  these  cruel  priests  and  friars  may  be  bridled,  till 
we  have  uttered  our  minds  in  all  matters  this  day  dt  bat  able  in  religion.  If  these 
things,  in  the  fear  of  God,  ye  grant  unto  us,  I  am  assured  that  of  God  ye  shall 
be  blessed,  whatsoever  Satan  shall  devise  against  you.  But  if  ye  contemner 
refuse  God,  who  thus  lovingly  offereth  unto  you  salvation  and  life,  ye  shall 
neither  escape  plagues  temporal,  which  shortly  shall  apprehend  you,  neither  yet 
the  torment  prepared  for  the  devil  and  his  angels." 

The  quotation  is  not  too  long.  To  use  the  scarcel)'  more  powerful  language  of 
Milton:  "It  was  Knox  himself,  the  reformer  of  a  kingdom,  that  spake  it;  and 


44  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

There  is  another  important  j^rinciple  involved  in  what 
has  been  termed  the  republican  spirit  of  the  first  churches. 
The  spread  of  political  power  as  necessarily  accompanies 
the  spread  of  intelligence  as  the  heat  of  the  sun  accompa- 
nies its  light ;  and  it  is  quite  as  idle  to  affirm  that  the  case 
should  be  otherwise  as  to  challenge  the  law  of  gravitation, 
or  any  of  the  other  great  laws  which  regulate  the  govern- 
ment of  tlie  universe.  If  the  progress  of  mind  cannot  be 
arrested,  it  is  quite  as  impossible  to  arrest  the  growth  of 
the  power  which  necessarily  accompanies  it.  Now,  Chris- 
tianity is  essentially  an  intellectual  religion,  which,  by 
increasing  the  popular  intelligence,  adds  necessarily  to  the 
popular  power.  It  is  a  system  not  of  rites  and  ceremonies, 
but  of  morals  and  doctrines,  —  of  morals  that  exercise 
those  useful  faculties  which  find  fit  employment  in  regu- 


though  his  sentence  seemetb  of  a  venturous  edge,  uttered  in  the  height  of  zeal, 
and  perchance  not  suited  to  every  low  decrepit  humor  of  the  time,  yet  who 
knoweth  whether  it  might  not  have  proceeded  from  the  dictat  of  a  Divine 
Spirit?  "  The  whole  passage  is  pregnant  with  what  may  be  termed  the  political 
influences  of  Cliristianity,  as  recognized  by  our  Saviour  himself,  when  he  de- 
clared that  he  had  come  not  to  send  peace  on  the  earth,  but  a  sword. 

The  concluding  portion  of  this  interesting  little  tract  is  conceived  in  the  very 
vein  in  which  Paul  addressed  himself  to  Felix,  and  rouses  like  the  blast  of  a 
trumpet.  The  reformer  speaks  of  perilous  times— of  blood  spilt  for  the  testi- 
mony of  Christ  by  unjust  princes  and  rulers  who  had  set  their  faces  against  tlie 
truth  —  of  proud  and  cruel  Churchmen,  embruted  in  their  lusts.  "  Tlieir  lives," 
he  says,  "  infect  the  air.  The  idolatry  which  openly  they  commit  defileth  the 
whole  land.  Tlie  innocent  blood  which  they  shed  crieth  for  vengeance  in  the 
ears  of  our  God  ;  and  none  among  you  do  unfeignedly  seek  after  any  redress  for 
such  foul  enormities.  Will  God  in  this  behalf  hold  you  as  innocent?  Be  not 
deceived,  dear  brethren.  God  hath  punished  not  only  proud  tyrants  and  cruel 
murderers,  but  also  such  as  with  them  did  draw  the  yoke  of  iniquity,  whether 
by  flattering  their  offences,  obeying  tlieir  unjust  commandments,  or  winking  at 
their  manifold  and  most  grievous  oppressions;  — all  such,  I  say,  God  once  pun- 
ished with  the  chief  offenders.  Be  assured,  brethren,  that  as  he  is  immutable  of 
nature,  so  will  he  not  pardon  you  in  that  whicli  he  hath  punished  in  others;  and 
now  the  less  because  he  hath  plainly  admonished  you  of  the  danger  to  come,  and 
offered  you  his  mercy  before  that  he  pour  forth  his  wrath  and  displeasure  on  the 
gainsayer  and  the  disobedient."  The  writer  concludes  with  an  emphatic  prayer 
that  his  "dearly  beloved  countrymen"  might  "be  partakers  of  the  glorious 
inheritance  prepared  for  such  as  refuse  themselves,  and  fight  under  the  banner 
of  Christ  Jesus  in  the  day  of  this  his  hot  battle;  and  that,  in  deep  consideration 
of  the  same,  they  miglit  learn  to  prefer  the  invisible  and  eternal  joys  to  the  vain 
pleasures  that  are  present."  For  these  quotations  see  Oliver  &  Boyd's  edition 
of  Knox,  1816,  vol.  ii.  pp.  259,  275,  and  278. 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  45 

lating  the  human  conduct,  and  of  doctrines  that,  in  their 
unexaggerated  magnitude,  fill,  and  more  than  till,  the 
widest  grasp  of  the  human  understanding.  There  is  scarce 
a  question  in  the  philosophy  of  mind  of  which  at  least  the 
germ  is  not  to  be  found  in  the  Bible ;  and  instead  of  leav- 
ing these  to  be  discussed  at  pleasure  by  a  few  intellectual 
natures,  it  renders  the  study  of  them  in  some  degree 
imperative  on  all.  The  same  revealed  truths  which,  as 
rudiments  of  thought,  serve  to  awaken  the  faculties, 
constitute  that  identical  "  mind  of  God,"  which  it  is  the 
essential  duty  of  all  men  to  know.  And  hence  it  is  that 
conversion,  in  so  many  instances,  is  scarcely  less  marked 
in  its  intellectual  than  in  its  moral  effects,  and  that  wher- 
ever the  Christian  religion  is  established  in  the  integrity 
of  its  first  promulgation,  men  in  even  the  humblest  condi- 
tion learn  to  reason  and  to  observe.  We  find  it  stated  by 
Locke,  that  among  the  Huguenots  of  France  the  common 
people  were  better  instructed  in  their  religion  than  even 
the  higher  classes  in  most  of  the  other  countries  in  Europe. 
We  are  told  by  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  that  "  the  uniform 
effect  of  Calvinism,  in  disposing  its  adherents  to  meta- 
physical speculation  (which  survives  at  times  even  the 
beliefs  in  which  it  originates),  cannot  be  doubted  to  have 
influenced  the  mind  of  Butler."  Christianity  formed  the 
sole  learning  of  Bunyan.  It  constituted,  in  its  reflex 
influences,  the  sole  education  of  Burns.  But  by  no  class 
of  writers,  or  no  series  of  facts,  is  this  sound  principle  bet- 
ter illustrated  than  by  the  history  of  the  Reformed  Church 
in  Scotland. 

The  Reformation  found  the  great  bulk  of  our  people 
parcelled  out,  through  the  influence  of  the  feudal  system, 
into  detached  masses,  —  possessed,  like  so  many  machines, 
of  a  merely  physical  power,  and  ready  to  be  employed, 
whether  for  good  or  evil,  as  the  caprice  of  a  few  ill-regu- 
lated minds  chanced  to  direct.  Pageants  and  ceremonies, 
with  a  multitude  of  vague,  ill-defined  beliefs,  to  which 
there  attached  no  discipline  of  purity,  and  the  tendency  of 


46  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

which  was  to  deaden,  not  to  stimulate  the  intellect,  consti- 
tuted the  entire  religion  of  the  country.  But  the  "revival 
of  the  ancient  opinions"  led  to  a  very  different  state  of 
things ;  partly,  doubtless,  through  the  more  covert  work- 
ings of  the  principle  described,  and  partly  through  the 
educational  institutions  established  for  the  direct  purpose. 
The  religion  of  the  reformers  was  a  religion  which  sought 
the  light,  and  which,  in  calling  upon  the  masses  to  reason 
and  to  judge,  laid  it  down  as  a  first  principle,  that  "for 
the  soul  to  be  without  knowledge  is  not  good."  The 
scheme  of  education  drawn  up  by  Knox  and  his  brethren 
was  at  once  the  most  liberal  and  comprehensive  which  the 
world  had  yet  seen,  and  bears  reference  in  all  its  pro- 
visions to  that  spiritual  nature,  the  common  inheritance 
of  the  species,  on  whose  high  level  all  men  meet  and  are 
equal.  It  provided  that  even  the  humblest  of  our  crafts- 
men and  peasants  should  be  furnished  with  the  data  neces- 
sary to  just  thinking,  and  brought  acquainted  with  the 
rules  which  regulate  the  reasoning  faculties.  Almost  all 
the  knowledge  which  books  could  supply  was  locked  up  in 
the  learned  languages.  It  was  appointed,  therefore,  "  that 
young  men  who  purposed  to  travel  in  some  handicraft,  or 
other  profitable  exercise,  for  the  good  of  the  common- 
wealth, should  (after  devoting  a  certain  time  to  reading  and 
the  catechism)  devote  a  certain  time  to  grammar  and  the 
Latin  tongue ;  and  then  a  certain  time  further  to  the  study 
of  the  other  tongues,  and  to  the  arts  of  philosophy."^  It 
must  have  been  surely  a  strange  fanaticism  that  could  have 
formed  a  system  such  as  this.  Despite  the  utmost  efforts 
of  the  reformers,  however,  the  system  was  only  partially 
established,  for  its  enemies  were  numerous  and  powerful. 
But  the  pure  and  intellectual  religion  in  which  it  origi- 
nated had  freer  course ;  and  such  were  the  effects  of  the 
latter,  that  in  little  more  than  half  a  century  it  had  filled 
even  the  humblest  cottages  of  our  country  with  thinking 
men,  who   had  learned  to  read   and  to  j^ray  over  their 

1  "  First  Book  of  Discipline,"  chap.  vii.  part  i.  clause  5. 


THE    WHiaGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  47 

Bibles.  The  fact  is  happily  illustrated  by  the  two  great 
persecutions  to  which  our^  Church  has  been  subjected, — • 
that  which  preceded  the  first  establishment  of  the  re- 
formed religion,  and  that  of  the  reign  of  Charles  II.  The 
martyrs  of  the  one  were  mostly  men  of  rank  and  learning. 
Hamilton  was  the  scion  of  a  noble  family,  Wishart  a  gen- 
tleman and  deeply  learned,  Miln  a  priest,  Straiton  well 
born  and  a  person  of  erudition.  The  victims  of  the  other, 
on  the  contrary,  were  taken,  in  most  instances,  from  among 
our  common  people  —  our  farmers,  mechanics,  and  shop- 
keepers. The  testimony  of  Bishop  Burnet  to  the  intelli- 
gence of  this  class,  as  adduced  by  the  Rev.  Andrew  Gray, 
in  his  masterly  pamphlet,  is  very  conclusive.  Burnet  was 
one  of  six  Episcopal  divines  employed  by  Leighton  in  the 
year  1670  to  go  among  the  people  and  combat  their  Pres- 
byterian prejudices ;  but  the  mission  proved,  it  w^ould 
seem,  of  little  efiect.  "  We  were  indeed  amazed,"  he 
states,  "to  see  a  poor  community  so  capable  of  arguing  ou 
points  of  government,  and  on  the  bounds  to  be  set  to  the 
power  of  princes  in  matters  of  religion.  Upon  all  these 
topics  they  had  texts  of  Scripture  at  hand,  and  were  ready 
with  their  answers  to  anything  which  was  said  to  them. 
And  this  measure  of  knowledge  was  spread  among  the 
very  meanest  of  them,  even  their  cottagers  and  their 
servants."  We  find  evidence  equally  direct,  though  of  a 
somewhat  different  character,  in  the  "death  testimonies" 
joreserved  in  such  works  as  "Naphtali"  and  the  "Cloud 
of  Witnesses."  Many  of  these  were  written  by  yeomen 
and  mechanics,  —  by  Glasgow  shopkeepers,  shoemakers 
from  Edinburgh,  and  weavers  from  the  Stewartry  of  Kirk- 
cudbright ;  and  yet,  though  sufficiently  humble  regarded 
merely  as  compositions,  there  are  none  of  them  so  imper- 
fect as  not  to  embody  the  thoughts  and  give  expression  to 
the  feelings  of  their  respective  authors.  Be  it  remem- 
bered, too,  that  they  are  the  productions  of  a  period  when 
it  Avas  no  uncommon  matter,  in  at  least  the  northern  j^arts 
of  the  kingdom,  to  find  persons  in  the  grade  of  gentlemen 
unable  to  sign  their  names. 


48  THE    WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

The  defects  and  errors  of  the  Scottish  Church  in  the 
earlier  and  better  part  of  her  liistory  it  is  no  difficult  task 
to  point  out.  We  do  not  live  among  greater  or  better 
men  than  the  Knoxes  and  Melvilles  of  the  sixteenth  cen- 
tury, or  the  Hendersons  and  Rntherfords  of  the  seven- 
teenth ;  but  we  live  in  an  age  considerably  in  advance  of 
theirs.  Let  us  remember,  however,  that  the  knowledge  of 
truths  which  perchance  we  could  never  have  discovered 
for  ourselves  does  not  entitle  us  to  look  down  with  any 
very  marked  contempt  on  the  vigorous-minded  worthies 
who  flourished  before  their  promulgation ;  and  that  we 
would  do  well  to  enjoy  with  moderation  the  chance  emi- 
nence which  raises  our  dapper  little  persons  over  the  giants 
who  stand  on  a  lower  level.  The  age  of  Knox  and  of 
Craig  was  essentially  a  despotic  age.  The  Church  in  which 
they  had  spent  that  earlier  portion  of  their  lives  in  which 
habits  of  thought  and  feeling  are  most  readily  formed,  was 
inevitably  and  constitutionally  a  despotic  Church.  The 
principles  of  toleration  were  altogether  the  discovery  of  a 
later  time.  It  is  undeniable,  too,  that  some  of  the  better 
members  of  the  Church,  in  her  seasons  of  suffering,  were 
goaded  into  blamable  excesses  by  that  exasperating  spirit 
of  persecution  which,  according  to  Solomon,  maketh  even 
wise  men  mad.  It  is  equally  undeniable  that  she  must 
have  included  within  her  pale,  in  her  times  of  triumph,  a 
considerable  amount  of  the  volatile  rascality  which  ever 
delights  to  attach  itself  to  a  dominant  party.  Do  we  not 
know  that  the  blood-thirsty  Lauderdale  and  the  crafty  and 
cruel  Sharpe  were  at  one  period  of  their  lives  zealous  and 
influential  Covenanters  ?  Let  us  not  confound,  however, 
the  excesses  of  either  her  true  or  her  renegade  members 
with  her  own  proper  acts,  or  the  grosser  spirit  which  some- 
times influenced  her  from  without  with  the  infinitely  purer 
principle  which  dwelt  within.  Nor  yet  let  us  forget  that 
the  great  bulk  of  our  countrymen  in  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries  had  not  attained  to  that  full  moral 
and  intellectual  stature  which  is  incompatible  with  a  state 


THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  49 

of  tutelage  and  subserviency.  We  treat  children  after  one 
fashion,  and  men  after  another,  in  even  the  freest  states, 
and  under  the  most  equal  laws.  And  in  deciding  regarding 
the  spirit  of  the  Scottish  Church,  there  can  be  nothing 
more  illiberal  than  to  mix  up  into  one  heterogeneous  idea 
two  such  opposite  principles  as  the  absolute  rule  of  a 
schoolmaster,  whose  very  vocation  it  is  to  forward  the 
progress  of  the  human  mind,  and  the  iron  despotism  of  a 
tyrant,  who,  to  accomplish  his  own  base  purj^oses,  would 
plunge  the  millions  into  barbarism.  Let  our  Church  be 
tried,  as  we  try  the  characters  of  our  fellow-men,  by  the 
main  scope  of  her  conduct,  and  the  intrinsic  value  and  as- 
certained effects  of  her  grand  principles.  Let  us  try  her 
enemies  and  antagonists  by  the  same  rule,  separating  their 
general  conduct  from  all  such  accidental  circumstances  as 
the  beauty  and  fascinating  elegance  of  Mary,  the  dignity 
under  suffering  of  Charles  I.,  or  the  military  genius  of 
Montrose  and  Dundee.  It  will  be  found  that  the  Church 
has  much  to  hope  and  nothing  to  dread  from  such  a  trial, 
—  that  ignorance,  tyranny,  cruelty,  superstition,  the  ignoble 
selfishness  that  would  sacrifice  the  welfare  of  the  many  to 
the  little  interests  of  the  few,  and  criminally  repress  the 
moral  and  intellectual  growth  of  the  species,  have  ever 
formed  the  chief  characteristics  of  her  opponents,  —  that 
a  regard  for  the  souls  of  men,  a  zeal  for  the  spread  of 
knowledge,  a  love  of  liberty  and  of  morals,  an  all-pervad- 
ing reverence  for  the  law  of  God  —  in  short,  the  "  antient 
opinions,"  joined  to  the  original  spirit  of  Christianity,  have 
ever  constituted  her  own. 

The  gist  of  the  argument  lies  in  least  compass  when  we 
regard  it  simply  as  a  question  of  history.  The  inevitable 
hostility  of  Christianity,  in  its  purer  forms,  to  irresponsible 
authority,  however  strengthened  by  ancient  prejudice  or 
unjust  laws,  arises,  as  has  been  shown,  from  two  grand 
principles,  —  the  recognition  of  a  paramount  code,  to 
which  every  other  code  must  yield,  and  an  intellectual 
discipline,  through  which  men  are  raised  to  a  freedom  and 

5 


60  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

dignity  of  thought  incompatible  with  a  state  of  political 
servitude.  And  what  wonder  that  principles  so  formida- 
ble should  have  found  bitter  enemies  in  absolute  kings 
and  tyrannical  nobles,  men  whose  widely  extended  privi- 
leges were  encroachments  on  the  unalienable  rights  of  the 
species  ?  Prerogative  urged  its  claims  on  the  one  side, 
men  asserted  their  rights  on  the  other.  But  though  such 
formed  the  actual  merits  of  the  controversy,  they  were 
otlierwise  stated  and  understood.  The  reformers  contended 
that  to  Ciesar  should  be  rendered  the  things  which  Were 
Caesar's,  and  nothing  more ;  and  that  they  should  be  per- 
mitted to  render  directly  unto  God  himself  the  things 
which  pertained  to  God.  Caesar  contended,  on  the  other 
liand,  that  he  should  be  put  in  possession  of  the  whole, — 
one  part,  of  course,  in  his  own  proper  right,  the  other  in 
an  assumed  capacity  of  steward  or  middleman.  The 
reformers  maintained  that  their  religion  was  a  pure  and 
scriptural  religion,  and  that  they  could  not  in  conscience 
receive  any  other.  Caesar  insisted  on  taking  this  scrip- 
tural religion  from  them,  and  setting  what  he  deemed  a 
better  in  its  place  —  a  religion  whose  laws  he  had  made  to 
agree  with  his  own.  In  all  history  there  are  not  three 
characters  better  or  more  generally  understood  than  those 
of  James  and  the  two  Charleses.  We  are  as  intimately 
acquainted  with  not  only  the  general  scope  of  their  con- 
duct, but  even  their  little  individual  peculiarities,  as  if  our 
knowledge  of  them  had  been  the  result  of  personal  obser- 
vation. Who  will  venture  to  affirm  that  any  one  of  the 
three,  even  the  alleged  author  of  the  Icon  Basilike  him- 
self, was  actuated  for  a  single  day  by  that  pure  missionary 
s|)irit  which  can  unhesitatingly  sacrifice  the  lower  regards 
of  self  to  the  glory  of  God  or  the  general  good  of  men  ; 
or  that  they  preferred  the  Episcopacy  they  were  so  zeal- 
ous to  establish,  to  the  Presbyterianism  they  would  so  fain 
have  annihilated,  merely  because  they  deemed  it  more 
purely  scriptural,  or  better  suited  to  advance  the  true 
interests  of  their  subjects?     J...nes,  whose  very  considera- 


TIIS    WIIIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  51 

ble  shrewdness  was  balanced  by  a  singularly  great  amount 
of  folly  and  weakness,  and  who  was  by  much  too  vain  to 
enjoy  his  wisdom  in  secret,  divulged  the  principle  on 
which  both  himself  and  his  successors  acted,  in  one  of 
those  "short  speeches"  which,  according  to  Bacon,  have 
the  double  quality  of  indicating  men's  real  designs  and 
of  flying  about  like  arrows.  "No  bishop,  no  king." 
The  Episcopacy  Avhich  these  jirinces  labored  to  introduce 
was  virtually  a  modified  Christianity,  which,  to  use  the 
language  of  Voltaire,  "  ran  counter  to  the  popular  spirit," 
necessarily  associated  with  the  "antient  opinions,"  now 
happily  "  revived."  The  institution  of  bishops  was  a 
]>iece  of  mere  political  machinery  on  which  to  rest  the 
ghostly  authority  of  the  king.  And  the  character  of  the 
men  best  suited  for  the  oflice  throws  light,  like  that  of  the 
princes  by  whose  authority  they  were  appointed  to  it,  on 
the  secular  nature  of  the  purposes  which  they  were  in- 
tended to  serve.  We  have  been  lately  instructed  by  an 
eminent  judge,  on  the  strength  of  a  Greek  etymology,  that 
this  order  of  Churchmen  and  the  Presbyterian  superin- 
tendents of  our  "First  Book  of  Discipline"  were  in  reality 
identical.  Perhaps,  however,  a  slight  acquaintance  wilh 
history  mid^t  have  stood  his  lordship  in  better  stead  on 
the  occasion  than  even  the  nicest  knowledge  of  Greek. 
The  Scotchman  knows  very  little  of  his  Church  who  does 
not  know  that  the  more  fitted  a  minister  was  to  be  a 
superintendent,  the  less  fitted  was  he  to  be  a  bishop.  The 
superintendent  was  a  faithful  and  able  clergyman,  "  a  man 
endowed  with  singular  graces,"  chosen  by  the  people  and 
his  brethren  to  be,  like  the  apostle  of  the  Gentiles,  "  more 
abundant  in  labors"  than  men  of  ordinary  gifts;  to  be  a 
journeyer  from  place  to  place,  in  districts  where  ministers 
were  few  ;  to  "preach  at  least  thrice  every  week ;"  to  take 
note  of  crimes  and  defections;  to  "admonish  where  admo- 
nition was  needed;"  to  give  good  counsel  where  it  was 
required ;  to  consider  how  the  "  poor  were  to  be  provided 
for,"  the  "  youth  instructed ; "  to  watch  over  the  "  manners 


52  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

of  the  people,"  the  lives  of  ministers,  the  order  of  churches.^ 
The  men  best  fitted  to  be  bishops,  on  the  contrary,  were 
the  Montgomeries,  Adamsons,  Sharpes  —  Judas  Iscariots 
of  the  Church.  It  was  essential  that  the  Scotch  superin- 
tendent should  have  much  religion ;  it  was  necessary  that 
the  Scotch  bishop  should  have  none.  Leighton  was  a 
truly  good  man  ;  and,  after  giving  the  office  a  fair  trial,  he 
found  himself  entirely  unfitted  for  it. 

It  may  be  remarked,  however,  that  though  the  Reformed 
Church  of  Scotland  has  always  been  opposed  to  bishops  in 
the  king's  sense  of  the  term,  she  has  ever  loved  and  cher- 
ished them  in  the  true  apostolical  sense;  and  that  the 
republican  level  on  which  she  has  placed  her  ministers  has 
proved  the  most  direct  means  of  securing  to  her  the  ser- 
vices of  real  bishops,  and  of  guarding  her  against  the 
intrusion  of  counterfeits.  It  has  secured  to  her  that  the 
John  Newtons,  Thomas  Scotts,  and  Richard  Cecils  of  the 
corporation  should  not  remain  in  inferior,  uninfluential 
offices,  when  right  reverend  infidels,  liigh  in  spiritual 
authority,  should  be  lending  the  full  weight  of  their  influ- 
ence to  degrade  to  the  merely  human  level  the  adorable 
and  sole  Redeemer.  The  bishops  of  our  Presbyterian 
Church  have  been  men  of  larger  minds  and  greater  moral 
force  thkn  their  brethren,  and  their  widely-extended 
dioceses  have  been  the  hearts  and  understandings ^f  the 
people  of  Scotland.  Knox,  Craig,  Melville,  Bruce,  Ruther- 
ford, Henderson,  Witherspoon,  Erskine,  Moncreiff,  Thom- 
son,—  all  these,  and  many  others,  were  eminent  Presby- 
terian bishops  of  the  first  rank ;  and,  though  their  claims 
may  seem  more  than  a  little  doubtful  when  tried  by  the 
Puseyite  argument,  we  have  no  unwillingness  whatever  to 
subject  them  to  the  test  of  reason  and  of  Scripture. 

Such  is  the  true  and  rational  Episcopacy  of  the  Church 
of  Scotland  — an  Episcopacy  founded  on  principles  which 
secure,  agreeably  to  the  spirit  of  the  apostolical  church, 
that  the  best  and  wisest  men  shall  exercise  the  greatest 

1  First  Book  of  Discipline,  chap.  vi.  part  n. 


THE    WniGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  53 

antliority,  and  which  the  counterfeit  Episcopacy  of  James 
and  the  Charleses  labored  so  zealously  to  subvert.  But 
tliere  is  a  principle  whose  hostility  to  the  Church's  true 
interest  is  even  less  defensible,  because  more  unequivocally 
secular,  than  that  of  the  nominal  religion  by  which  the 
Church,  in  the  earlier  portion  of  her  history,  was  so  long 
and  so  grievously  oppressed.  It  is  not  difficult  to  conceive 
how,  through  a  little  perverted  ingenuity,  the  identical 
arguments  which  support  the  better  Episcopacy  may  be 
converted  into  sophisms  to  defend  the  worse.  Nothing 
easier  than  to  prove  the  immense  value  of  such  master- 
spirits as  our  Knoxes  and  Hendersons ;  and  it  is  only 
necessary  to  confound  the  distinctions  conferred  on  Church- 
men by  kings  and  laws,  with  the  distinctions  created  among 
them  by  grace  and  nature,  in  order  to  arrogate  an  equal 
importance  to  the  hierarchy  appointed  by  men  as  to  the 
hierarchy  instituted  by  God.  Or  the  argument  may  be 
differently  grounded.  It  may  be  asserted  that  a  nominal 
Episcopacy  in  the  Church  is  a  mere  recognition  of  its  real 
Episcopacy  —  a  mere  system  of  sanctions  extended  by  hu- 
man law  to  the  natural  and  divinely-instituted  authority 
of  great  and  good  men.  And  to  give  the  assertion  weight 
and  plausibility  in  its  bearing  on  the  Scottish  Church,  we 
have  merely  to  «et  aside  our  histories,  and  to  forget  that  it 
was  the  Montgomeries,  Adamsons,  and  Sharpes,  to  whose 
authority  the  law  extended  its  sanction,  while  our  untitled, 
though  surely  most  venerable  and  divinely-instituted  bish- 
ops were  compelled  to  flee  for  their  lives  to  the  hill-side. 
But  the  other  great  expedient  for  secularizing  the  Church, — 
the ]K(tronage principle,  —  even  sophistry  itself  has  scarcely 
ingenuity  enough  to  defend.  It  is  one  of  those  legalized 
enormities  which  disdain  to  assume  even  the  color  of  good, 
and  which  base  their  claims  to  the  respect  and  obedience 
of  the  masses  whom  they  oppress,  not  on  their  being  just 
and  rational,  but  on  their  being  law.  Episcopacy,  not- 
withstanding its  grovelling  and  earthly  spirit,  was  osten- 
sibly a  form  of  religion  as  truly  as  Presbyterianism  itself; 

5* 


54  THE   AVIIIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

and  the  controversy  assumed,  in  consequence,  a  theological 
aspect.  The  patronage  principle,  on  the  contrary,  is  avow- 
edly secular.  It  interferes  with  spiritual  concerns,  with  no 
spiritual  character  to  assert,  and  intermeddles  with  matters 
of  conscience,  with  no  conscientious  motives  to  urge. 

True  it  is,  however,  that  the  difference  is  rather  appar- 
ent than  real.  It  will  be  found  that  it  is  virtually  the 
same  modifying  power  in  its  attempts  to  render  the  Church 
a  merely  secular  institution,  subservient  to  merely  secular 
purposes,  which  assumed  an  Episcopal  form  in  the  earlier 
portion  of  her  history,  and  embodied  itself  into  a  patron- 
age principle  in  the  latter.  It  will  be  found,  too,  that  iden- 
tically the  same  class  of  men  who  were  so  ready  to  lay 
down  their  lives  in  resisting  the  encroachments  of  the  one, 
have  been  ever  the  staunchest  and  most  uncompromising 
opponents  of  the  other;  that  though  the  assaulting  prin- 
ciple from  without  has  altered  its  form  and  mode  of  attack, 
it  has  not  altered  its  nature ;  and  that  the  resisting  prin- 
ciple within,  still  more  thoroughly  consistent,  has  retained 
both  its  form  and  its  nature  too.  The  two  conflicts,  at 
once  dissimilar  and  alike,  have  agitated  the  Church  during 
two  nearly  equal  periods  of  her  history,  —  the  one  from 
early  in  the  reign  of  James  YI.  until  the  Revolution,  the 
other  from  the  latter  years  of  Anne  until  the  present 
day.  Patronage  existed  during  the  earlier  period ;  and 
broadly  was  it  denounced,  and  the  "  free  election  "  princi- 
ple asserted,  by  even  the  first  fathers  of  the  Reformation ; 
but  the  field  was  occupied  by  questions  embodying  the 
same  antagonist  principles  in  a  difierent  form,  and  the 
abuse  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  popular  right  on  the  other, 
were  assigned  subordinate  places  in  the  controversy.  It  is 
perhaps  not  unworthy  of  remark,  that  the  truly  liberal 
educational  scheme  of  the  reformers  shared  (also  in  a  sub- 
ordinate form)  in  exactly  the  same  prosperity  and  the  same 
reverses  with  the  non-intrusion  principle ;  that  the  cause 
of  ignorance  and  of  patronage  on  the  part  of  the  court, 
of  the  popular  right  and   of  popular  instruction   on   the 


THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  55 

part  of  the  Church,  triumphed  and  suffered  together. 
During  the  earlier  part  of  the  seventeenth  century,  the 
educational  scheme,  with  only  its  true  excellence  to  recom- 
mend it,  retained  its  first  unauthorized  and  unsanctioned 
character.  ISTo  sooner,  however,  did  the  Church  become 
dominant,  at  the  close  of  the  reign  of  Charles  I.,  than  it 
passed  into  a  law,  —  "a  law," says  Currie,  the  elegant  biog- 
rapher of  Burns,  "  which  may  challenge  comparison  with 
any  act  of  legislation  to  be  found  in  the  records  of  history, 
whether  we  consider  the  wisdom  of  the  ends  in  view,  the 
simplicity  of  the  means  employed,  or  the  provisions  made 
to  render  these  means  effectual  to  their  purpose."  ^  The 
Church  sank  on  the  Restoration,  and  the  educational  law 
sank  with  it,  together  with  all  the  other  laws  unsanctioned 
by  the  royal  assent.  It  slept  during  the  reigns  of  Charles 
and  James;  but  on  the  Revolution  the  Church  again  be- 
came dominant,  and  this  wise  and  good  ]aw  was  again 
enacted  in  identically  the  original  terms.  I  need  hardly 
remind  the  reader  that  it  had  for  its  meet  companion  an 
anti-patronage  law,  which  was  established,  abolished,  and 
reenacted  at  precisely  the  same  periods,  and  through  ex- 
actly the  same  influences. 

The  origin  of  the  singularly  metaphysical  right  of  pat- 
ronage has  been  variously  accounted  for.  It  has  been 
asserted  that  it  may  be  traced  simply  to  the  circumstance 
that,  in  the  earlier  periods  of  our  ecclesiastical  history, 
churches  were  sometimes  built  and  endowed  by  private 
individuals,  who  retained  to  themselves  and  their  succes- 
sors the  right  of  nominating  the  ecclesiastics  by  whom  the 
duties  attached  to  these  erections  were  to  be  performed, 
and  the  revenues  enjoyed;  and  that  this  merely  civil  right 
escaped  the  general  confiscation  of  church  property  which 
took  place  at  the  Reformation,  and  has  come  down,  with  a 
few  interruptions,  to  our  own  times.  It  will  be  found,  how- 
ever, that  this,  though  a  sufficiently  clear,  is  but  a  partial 
statement  of  the  case.     In  whom,  I  ask,  were  the  rights  of 

1  Dr.  Currie's  Prefatory  Remarks,  Life  of  Burns. 


56  THE   WHIGGISM   OF  THE   OLD   SCHOOL. 

patronage  vested  in  1560,  on  the  first  documentary  recog- 
nition of  Protestantism  by  the  Lords  of  the  Congregation? 

—  Not,  certainly,  in  the  Argyles,  Glencairns,  Lindsays, 
Boyds,  Hays,  Lochinvars,  Marshals,  Drumlanrigs,  of  Scot- 
tish story.  I  find  the  names  of  these  noblemen,  with  those 
of  many  others,  attached  to  the  First  Book  of  Discipline, 
in  which  the  free  election  principle  is  so  broadly  and  un- 
comproniisingly  laid  down.  I  find,  too,  that  in  pledging 
themselves  to  support  the  various  important  principles 
which  the  book  embodies,  as  altogether  "  good  and  con- 
form to  God's  word,"  they  could  stipulate  as  a  condition 
that  the  Churchmen  of  the  exploded  fiiith  should  be  per- 
mitted to  enjoy  their  benefices  during  the  course  of  their 
lives.  But  there  is  no  stipulation  regarding  the  "free elec- 
tion "  principle ;  no  mention  made  of  a  right  vested  in 
either  themselves  or  others,  which  it  threatened  to  subvert ; 
in  short,  nothing  whatever  to  show  that  they  deemed  the 
claims  of  patronage  more  Protestant  in  principle,  or  less 
entirely  abrogated  by  the  triumph  of  the  "  antient  opin- 
ions," than  even  the  worship  of  saints  and  images,  or  the 
doctrine  of  transubstantiation  itself.  The  Reformation 
interposed  at  this  period  a  wide  gulf  between  the  abuses 
of  the  old  system  and  the  usages  of  the  new,  and  not  a 
single  right  of  patronage  had  as  yet  strided  across  the 
chasm. 

The  revival  of  these  rights  was  evidently  an  after- 
thought,—  one  of  the  many  expedients  of  the  time  for 
secularizing  the  Church.  We  read  its  true  character  in 
that  of  the  party  in  whom  it  originated,  —  in  the  appoint- 
ment of  the  tulchan  bishops,  in  the  violence  of  Morton 
and   his    associates  in   1571,  in  the  Black  Acts  of   1584, 

—  in  short,  in  the  entire  history  of  James,  and  in  that  of 
his  son.  Nor  can  we  well  conceive  a  greater  contrast  than 
that  which  existed  between  the  spirit  in  which  these  rights 
of  patronage  were  asserted  by  the  court  party  on  the  one 
side,  and  the  modified  and  well-restricted  sense  in  which 
they  were  recognized  by  the  Church  on  the  other.     The 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  57 

highest  civil  authority  was  of  course  that  of  the  king ;  nor 
was  his  power  yet  compressed  within  its  true  limits  by  the 
just  rights  of  the  people;  for,  though  a  few  enlightened 
minds  of  the  Knox  and  Buchanan  calibre  could  mark  out  the 
separating  boundary  with  a  skill  and  precision  not  surpassed 
in  any  after  period,  there  existed  no  tidal  influences  of  opin- 
ion powerful  enough  to  raise  and  propel  the  masses  to  the 
proper  line.  Liberty  had  ahuost  all  its  battles  yet  to  fight, 
and  prerogative  almost  all  its  defeats  yet  to  sustain.  The 
king  was  the  first  magistrate  of  the  country ;  but  he  was 
also  a  great  deal  more ;  and  the  national  property  held  by 
him  for  the  public  good  was  too  often  confounded  with  a 
thing  so  entirely  different  as  the  personal  property  held  by 
him  for  his  own  benefit.  But  though  the  Church  shared,  in 
some  degree,  in  this  confusion  of  ideas,  her  high  principles 
assisted  materially  in  clearing  her  views ;  and  she  could 
assert  in  her  Book  of  Discipline  that  not  even  by  the  king 
himself  should  ministers  be  obtruded  on  congregations 
contrary  to  the  will  of  the  people.  In  his  connection  with 
her  patrimony,  however,  —  a  connection  which,  now  that 
such  matters  are  better  understood,  resolves  itself  into 
merely  the  care  of  the  magistracy  extended  to  public  prop- 
erty employed  for  the  public  advantage,  —  she  recognized 
his  rights  of  patronage.  Nor  is  it  at  all  difficult  to  conceive 
how,  in  her  view  of  the  matter,  these  rights,  and  even  a 
free-election  principle,  should  be  perfectly  compatible  with 
each  other.  She  had  but  one  code  of  laws  and  one  rule 
of  duty  for  all  men,  with  no  peculiar  license  for  kings;  and, 
deeming  the  monarch  as  certainly  an  accountable  creature 
as  any  of  his  subjects,  and  recognizing  but  one  way  in 
which  his  privileges  could  be  employed,  she  held  that  his 
right  of  patronage  was  a  sacred  trust,  which  he  could  only 
properly  exercise  by  extending  to  the  people,  as  the  occa- 
sion offered,  a  liberty  of  choice ;  and  that  the  intrusion 
upon  them  of  an  unpopular  minister  was  a  gross  and  crim- 
inal abuse  of  power,  which,  as  being  contrary  to  justice, 
no  law  could  sanction.      There  are,  fortunately,  Scottish 


58  THE   WIIIGGISM   OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

patrons  of  the  present  day  who  view  the  privilege  as  vested 
in  themselves  in  a  light  exactly  similar  to  that  in  which 
the  Church  regarded  it  in  its  connection  with  the  king,  and 
who  find  no  disagreement  between  its  wise  and  conscien- 
tious exercise  and  a  scrupulous  regard  to  the  welfare  and 
wishes  of  the  people;  nor  is  the  right  a  merely  nominal 
one,  when  thus  exercised  by  these  men,  if  the  gratitude 
and  good-will  of  thousands,  and  the  approval  of  their  own 
conscience,  be  matters  of  any  value.  Even  we  of  the 
present  time  have  no  other  objection  to  patronage  in  such 
hands  than  the  one  which  a  Roman  of  the  empire  might 
have  urged  against  the  despotism  of  an  Antonine  or  an 
Aureliau  ;  —  it  is  merely  the  irresponsible  ppwer,  and  the 
'Neros  and  Domitians,  that  we  dread. 

But  James  YI.,  the  true  son  of  Mary  and  of  Darnley, 
and,  if  we  except  his  ancestor,  James  III.,  the  most  con- 
temptible of  all  our  Scottish  kings,  was  a  patron  of  a  very 
diiferent  stamp  from  either  Sir  George  Sinclair  or  the 
Marquis  of  Bute.  At  once  timid  and  unscrupulous,  grasp- 
ing and  profuse,  facile  and  ungenerous,  childishly  attached 
to  a  few,  though  indiiferent  to  the  ^ood  of  the  many,  ever 
eager  to  extend  his  power  beyond  the  just  limits,  and  yet 
ever  subject  to  some  petty  tyranny  of  his  own  creating, 
with  almost  vanity  and  folly  enough  to  neutralize  his  cun- 
ning, and  nearly  weakness  enough  to  balance  his  wicked- 
ness,—  there  was  scarce  an  opportunity  of  good  or  of 
advantage  which  he  did  not  misimprove,  scarce  a  privilege 
which  he  did  not  abuse,  scarce  a  duty  in  which  he  did  not 
fail.  Nay,  such  was  the  nature  of  the  man,  that  he  was 
hardly  more  faithful  to  his  own  selfish  aims  than  to  the 
just  rights  of  his  subjects.  Robertson  shows  us  with  how 
careless  a  hand  he  portioned  out,  among  his  flatterers  and 
favorites,  the  church  lands  annexed  by  Parliament  to  the 
Crown,  and  which,  if  retained,  would  have  so  mightily 
strengthened  the  power  he  was  so  anxious  to  establish. 
And  Calderwood  relates  that  he  dealt  after  exactly  the 
same  manner  with  the  rights  of  patronage,  wdiich  he  had 


THE    WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  b9 

for  the  purpose  created,  contrary  to  law,  "when  they  had 
ceased  to  exist  —  scattering  them  as  thoughtlessly  and  pro- 
fusely among  his  courtiers  arid  minions  as  he  could  have 
done  the  counters  which  he  used  in  play,  when  the  game 
w^as  over.^  The  Church  seriously  remonstrated  against  an 
abuse  of  the  kingly  power  so  weak  in  itself,  and  so  preg- 
nant with  evil,  and  urged,  somewhat  in  the  spirit  of  the 
List  General  Assembly,  that  gifts  of  such  ill  omen  should 
be  instantly  recalled,  and  that  commissioners  and  presby- 
teries should  not  be  "  processed  and  horned"  for  not  giv- 
ing admission  to  "persons  presented  by  the  new  patrons." 
But  supplications  and  remonstrances  with  only  justice  and 
reason  to  recommend  them  proved  of  little  avail ;  and  the 
king's  gifts,  in  all  their  portentous  absurdity,  were  con- 
firmed, not  recalled.  Certainly  the  origin  of  patronage  in 
the  Reformed  Church  of  Scotland  had  not  been  such  as  to 
entitle  it  to  much  reverence.  It  has  been  truly  remarked, 
that  the  cause  of  justice  and  of  truth  stands  in  need  of  no 
pedigree  to  ennoble  it;  but  the  reverse  is  not  equally  true; 
and  it  is  well  to  know  of  an  antagonist  cause,  that  the 
meanness  of  its  descent  corresponds  with  the  flagitiousness 
of  its  principles.  It  does  not  in  any  degree  tend  to  increase 
our  respect  for  the  rights  of  patronage  —  rights  so  con- 
tinually associated  with  wrong  —  to  find  that  they  should 
have  originated  in  the  grasping  rapacity  of  a  selfish  aris- 
tocracy, who,  to  accomplish  their  sordid  purposes  of  per- 
sonal or  family  aggrandizement,  could  have  sacrificed  the 
spiritual  welfare  of  a  whole  country,  in  the  mistaken  no- 
tions of  a  comparatively  uninformed  age,  only  partially 
won  from  slavery  and  barbarism,  and  in  the  criminal 
usurpation  and  weak  profusion  of  a  silly  and  unprincipled 
king. 

To  the  reenactment  of  patronage  by  the  last  Parliament 
of  Anne  it  is  unnecessary  to  allude.     All  the  more  honor- 


1  Caklerwood,  p.  227.    (Sir  George  M'Kenzie,  Observ.  Act  1692,  c.  121,  observes: 
•There  cau  be  nothing  so  unjust  and  illegal  as  these  patronages  were/') 


60  THE   WHIGGISM   OF  THE   OLD   SCHOOL. 

able  friends  of  the  principle  wliich  the  law  embodies  freely 
admit  that  the  measure,  whatever  it  was  in  itself,  was  dis- 
gracefully carried,  and  that  the  accomplishment  of  its  main 
object  would  have  proved  the  ruin  of  the  country.  There 
is  no  one  reckless  or  unprincipled  enough  to  justify  it  in 
its  first  character  as  a  conspiracy.  Brougham  himself  does 
no  more  than  shut  his  eyes  on  the  history  of  the  time,  and 
observe  a  profound  silence  regarding  the  facts.  The  apolo- 
gists of  the  law  ground  their  defence  on  an  entirely  differ- 
ent basis.  They  remark,  with  Paley,  that  there  are  meas- 
ures which  have  presented,  on  their  first  establisment,  an 
apparently  doubtful  or  indifferent  character,  which  are 
found  eventually  to  involve  principles  little  dreamed  of  by 
either  their  friends  or  their  enemies,  and  to  serve  other 
and  more  important  purposes  than  those  for  which  they 
were  originally  designed,  and  that  the  law  of  patronage  is 
one  of  these.  They  are  ingenuous  enough,  in  most  in- 
stances, to  confess,  with  the  honorable  Sir  Walter,  that  the 
law  was  badly  conceived  and  ill-intended ;  they  only  assert 
that  it  has  wrought  well.  Now,  most  broadly  and  point- 
edly do  we  deny  the  fact.  It  has  not  wrought  well.  It 
has  wrought  ill  —  decidedly,  unequivocally,  emphatically 
ill.  It  has  ever  breathed  in  its  influences  the  spirit  of  its 
first  enactment ;  its  character  has  ever  corresponded  with 
the  baseness  of  its  origin ;  it  has  done  more  to  unchristian- 
ize  the  people  of  Scotland  than  all  the  learned  and  in- 
genious infidelity  of  the  eighteenth  century;  it  has  inflicted 
a  severer  injury  on  the  Church  than  all  the  long-protracted 
and  bloody  persecutions  of  the  seventeenth. 

The  subject  is  one  of  great  multiplicity ;  but  nothing 
can  well  be  simpler  or  more  obvious  than  the  principles 
which  it  involves  ;  and  the  light  of  reason  and  of  history 
exhibit  it  in  exactly  the  same  point  of  view.  No  one 
can  assert,  without  either  a  strange  abuse  of  words  or  a 
scarcely  conceivable  confusion  of  ideas,  that  a  law  works 
for  the  benefit  of  any  institution,  if  it  be  the  direct  and 
palpable  tendency  of  that  law  to  overturn  and  destroy  it. 


THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  61 

And  it  is  not  less  obvious,  that  if  the  institution  be  good, 
and  positively  useful,  the  law  which  tends  to  its  overthrow 
must  be  bad,  and  positively  mischievous.  It  is  a  poison 
introduced  into  the  system,  a  "law  which  kills."  Now, 
it  is  an  undisputed  fjict,  that  little  more  than  a  century 
has  passed  since  a  Commission  of  the  General  Assembly 
"loosened  the  pastoral  relation"  of  four  of  our  worthiest 
clergymen  "to  their  respective  charges,"  and  declared 
them  to  be  "no  longer  ministers  of  the  Church;"  and  this 
for  no  other  crime  than  that  of  daring  openly  to  avow  the 
same  detestation  of  the  intrusive  principle  which,  during 
the  two  preceding  centuries,  all  the  better  Presbyterians 
of  the  country  had  been  openly  avowing  before  them.  It 
is  not  less  a  fact,  that  in  the  Edinburgh  Almanac  for  the 
present  year  there  are  no  fewer  than  twelve  closely-printed 
pages  of  names  of  Scottish  clergymen  located  within  the 
country,  each  of  these  holding  by  the  same  catechism  and 
confession  of  faith  with  the  Church  itself;  each  and  all  of 
them  deriving  their  distinctive  designation  from  the  four 
ejected  ministers,  and  their  separate  existence,  either  di- 
rectly or  indirectly,  from  the  abuse  of  patronage ;  each 
furnished  with  an  attached  congregation,  wdio,  but  for  the 
tyranny  of  the  deprecated  law,  would  have  been  at  this 
moment  within  the  pale  of  the  Establishment,  constituting 
its  strength ;  and  that,  in  the  pro^^ortion  of  about  seven- 
eighths  to  the  entire  amount,  this  numerous  and  influential 
body,  both  ministers  and  people,  are  zealously  laboring  to 
overturn  this  very  Establishment,  and  want  only  a  little 
more  of  that  power  which  has  been  accumulating  among 
them  in  so  formidable  a  ratio  during  the  last  fifty  years,  fully 
to  accomplish  their  purpose.  Nay,  that  they  do  not  already 
possess  this  power,  and  that  the  Church  is  not  already 
overthrown,  is  owing  solely  to  the  fact  that  the  patrons  of 
Scotland  have  been,  in  many  instances,  a  great  deal  less 
wicked  than  the  law  of  patronage,  and  have  waived  the 
exclusive  rights  which  it  conferred  upon  them  in  favor  of 
the  people. 

6 


62  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

And  not  only  can  it  be  shown  that  the  hiw  of  patronage 
has  a  direct  tendency  to  destroy  the  Church,  but  that  it 
has  also  a  tendency  equally  direct  to  render  it  worthy  of 
being  destroyed.  The  entire  people  of  Scotland  are  judges 
in  this  matter;  there  is  no  need  of  framing  arguments 
to  convince  them;  it  is  only  necessary  to  refer  to  well- 
known  facts.  AVhen,  and  through  what  influence,  I  ask, 
was  it  that  the  Church  of  Scotland,  long  the  most  popular 
and  influential  of  all  establishments,  ceased  to  so  great  an 
extent  to  impress  its  own  character  on  that  of  the  country, 
and,  from  being  a  guide  and  leader  of  the  people,  sunk  in 
so  marked  a  degree  into  a  follower  and  dej^endent  on  the 
government  and  the  aristocracy?  "When  and  through 
what  influence  was  it  that  the  children  learned  to  look 
with  coldness  and  suspicion  on  an  order  of  men  to  whom 
their  fathers  had  turned  in  every  time  of  trouble  for  as- 
sistance and  counsel,  —  whose  sayings  they  delighted  to 
treasure  up,  —  the  stories  of  whose  lives  and  sufferings 
constituted  their  choicest  literature,  —  whose  very  names 
they  employed  as  watchwords  whenever  there  was  a  right 
to  be  asserted  or  a  wrong  to  be  redressed,  —  whom  they 
unhesitatingly  followed  to  the  hillside  and  the  battle-field, 
into  exile  and  captivity,  to  tortures  and  to  death  ?  When 
and  through  what  influence  was  it  that  the  old  evangelical 
party  sunk  into  a  feeble  and  persecuted  minority,  —  that 
party  who  subscribed  the  confession  of  our  faith,  believ- 
ing it  in  their  hearts,  —  who,  fearing  the  curse  denounced 
by  John,  delivered  the  whole  truth  of  God,  taking  nothing 
therefrom,  and  adding  nothing  thereto,  —  who  first  asserted 
for  tiiemselves  and  their  countrymen  the  high  rights  of  the 
species,  and  dared  to  think  and  to  act  with  the  freedom  of 
men  ennobled  by  "  the  liberty  with  which  Christ  maketh 
his  people  free," — who  so  zealously  strove,  amid  the  dark- 
ness of  ignorance  and  superstition,  to  extend  to  even  the 
meanest  vassal  the  blessings  of  religion  and  the  light  of 
learning,  and  who  were  ever  so  ready  in  the  good  cause 
to  give  their  temporalities  to  the  winds,  and  to  hold  their 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  63 

lives  as  nothing?  When  and  through  what  influence  was 
it  that  more  than  one-half  the  clergy  of  our  Church,  pow- 
erless for  every  good  purpose,  were  made  to  stand  on 
exactly  the  same  ground  which  had  been  occupied  by  the 
curates  and  bishops  of  half  a  century  before,  and  through 
which  the  pike  and  the  musket  came  to  be  employed,  as 
in  the  worst  days  of  Charles  II.,  to  secure  the  settlement 
of  ministers  misnamed  Presbyterian?  Through  what  in- 
fluence was  it  that,  the  more  secular-minded  the  clergy- 
man, the  more  certain  was  he  of  retaining  his  office  in  the 
Church,  and  through  which  men  such  as  Fisher  and  the 
Erskines  came  to  be  regarded  as  the  very  pests  and  trai- 
tors of  the  institution,  and  the  godly  and  inoffensive  Gilles- 
pie—  whose  sole  crime  it  was  that  he  would  neither  offend 
against  his  own  sense  of  duty  nor  yet  outrage  the  con- 
science of  others  —  came  to  be  contemptuously  thrust 
out?  Through  what  influence  was  it  that  the  clerical 
flirmers  and  corn-factors  of  forty  years  ago  were  brought 
into  the  Church,  —  the  men  who  were  so  ready,  in  what 
has  been  termed  the  natural  course  of  society,  to  quit  the 
l^astoral  for  the  agricultural  life,  and  who,  in  years  of 
scarcity,  when  the  price  of  grain  rose  beyond  all  precedent, 
were  either  thriving  on  the  miseries  of  the  people,  and 
accumulating  to  themselves,  in  the  least  popular  of  all 
characters,  the  bitter  contempt  and  un mingled  detestation 
of  a  whole  country,^  or,  as  the  unhonored  martyrs  of  un- 
lucky speculation,  were  studying  in  jails,  or  under  hiding, 
the  restrictions  and  technicalities  of  the  bankrupt  statutes? 
Who  of  all  the  men  of  our  country  has  not  marked  the  dif- 
ference which  obtains  between  the  faithful  minister  of  Jesus 
Christ,  alike  equal  in  rank  to  the  highest  and  to  the  lowest 
who  have  souls  to  be  lost  or  saved,  —  between  the  zealous 
preacher  of  the  truth,  appointed  by  God  himself  to  wres- 
tle with  men  for  their  souls,  and  the  mere  clerical,  half- 


1  It  is  a  fact  which  stands  in  need  of  no  comment,  that  the  person  in  the  north 
of  Scotland  who  lirst  raised  the  price  of  oatmeal  to  three  pounds  per  boll  was  a 
minister  of  the  Established  Church. 


64  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

fashionable  gentleman  of  "  limited  means,"  so  little  re- 
spected by  the  people,  and  so  coldly  regarded  by  the 
aristocracy,  —  the  mere  reader  of  sermons  for  apiece  of 
bread,  whose  sole  "vocation"  consists  in  the  perhaps  pur- 
chased favor  of  some  unprincipled  courtier  or  ungodly 
patron?  Truly  the  people  of  Scotland  must  forget  a 
great  deal  before  they  can  learn  to  love  patronage  even  a 
very  little ;  and  the  man  must  be  wofully  ignorant  of  both 
the  facts  of  the  question  and  the  national  character,  or 
strangely  confident  in  his  own  powers  of  persuasion,  who 
hopes  to  convince  us,  in  the  face  of  ten  thousand  hostile 
recollections,  that  the  secularizing,  soul-destroying  law  of 
the  infidel  Bolingbroke  has  wrought  well. 

I  heard  sermon  only  a  few  weeks  ago  in  the  church  of  a 
country  parish  in  the  north  of  Scotland,  where  almost  the 
entire  people  are  separated  from  the  clergyman.  I  had 
previously  seen  much  of  the  evils  of  patronage.  In  the 
prosecution  of  a  humble  but  honest  calling,  of  which  I  am 
not  mean  enough  to  be  ashamed,  I  had  travelled  over  a 
considerable  part  of  Scotland.  I  had  been  located  for 
months  together,  at  one  period  of  my  life,  among  the  par- 
ishes of  its  southern  districts,  at  another  in  those  of  the 
north ;  I  had  seen  both  the  Highlands  and  the  Low 
country ;  and  if  the  powers  of  observation  were  not  want- 
ing, the  opportunities  were  certainly  very  great.  But  the 
almost  entire  desertion  of  a  pastor  by  his  people  was  a 
thing  I  had  not  yet  witnessed,  and  I  was  desirous  to  see 
and  judge  for  myself  There  are  associations  of  a  high 
and  peculiar  character  connected  with  this  northern  parish. 
For  more  than  a  thousand  years  it  has  formed  part  of  the 
patrimony  of  a  truly  noble  family,  celebrated  by  Philip 
Doddridge  for  its  great  moral  worth,  and  by  Sir  Walter 
Scott  for  its  high  military  genius,  and  through  whose  in- 
fluence the  light  of  the  Reformation  had  been  introduced 
into  this  remote  corner,  at  a  period  when  all  the  neighbor- 
ing districts  were  enveloped  in  the  original  darkness.  In 
a  later  age  it  had  been  honored  by  the  fines  and  proscrip- 


THE    WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  65 

tions  of  Charles  II. ;  and  its  minister  —  one  of  those  men 
of  God  whose  names  still  live  in  the  memory  of  the  coun- 
try, and  whose  biography  occupies  no  small  space  in  the 
recorded  history  of  her  "worthies "  —  had  rendered  him- 
self so  obnoxious  to  the  tyranny  and  irreligion  of  the 
time,  that  he  was  ejected  from  his  charge  more  than  a 
year  before  any  of  the  other  non-conforming  clergymen 
of  the  Church.  I  approached  the  parish  from  the  east. 
The  day  w^as  warm  and  pleasant;  the  scenery  through 
which  I  passed,  some  of  the  finest  in  Scotland.  The 
mountains  rose  on  the  right  in  huge  Titanic  masses,  that 
seemed  to  soften  their  purple  and  blue  in  the  clear  sun- 
shine to  the  delicate  tone  of  the  deep  sky  beyond,  and  I 
could  see  the  yet  unwasted  snows  of  summer  glittering  in 
little  detached  masses  along  their  summits;  the  hills  of 
the  middle  region  were  feathered  with  wood ;  a  forest  of 
mingled  oaks  and  larches,  which  still  blended  the  tender 
softness  of  spring  wnth  the  full  foliage  of  summer,  swept 
down  to  the  path ;  the  wide  undulating  plain  below  was 
laid  out  into  fields,  mottled  with  cottages,  and  waving  with 
the  yet  unshot  corn  ;  and  a  noble  arm  of  the  sea  winded 
along  the  lower  edge  for  nearly  twenty  miles,  losing  itself 
to  the  west  among  blue  hills  and  jutting  headlands,  and 
opening  in  the  east  to  the  main  ocean  through  a  magnifi- 
cent gateway  of  rock.  But  the  little  groups  which  I  en- 
countered at  every  turning  of  the  path,  as  they  journeyed, 
with  all  the  sober,  well-marked  decency  of  a  Scottish  Sab- 
bath morning,  tow\ards  the  church  of  a  neighboring  parish, 
interested  me  more  than  even  the  scenery.  The  clan 
wdiich  inhabited  this  part  of  the  country  had  borne  a 
well-marked  character  in  Scottish  story.  Buchanan  has 
described  it  as  one  of  the  most  fearless  and  warlike  in  the 
north.  It  served  under  the  Bruce  at  Bannockburn ;  it  was 
the  first  to  rise  in  arms  to  protect  Queen  Mary,  on  her  visit 
to  Inverness,  from  the  intended  violence  of  Huntly ;  it 
fought  the   battles   of  Protestantism  in    Germany   under 

6* 


66  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

Gustavus  Adolphus;^  it  covered  the  retreat  of  the  English 
at  Fontenoy,  and  presented  an  unbroken  front  to  the 
enemy  after  all  the  other  allied  troops  had  quitted  the 
field.  And  it  was  the  descendants  of  these  very  men  who 
were  now  passing  me  on  the  road.  The  rugged,  robust 
form,  half  bone,  half  muscle;  the  springy  firmness  of  the 
tread;  the  grave,  manly  countenance,  —  all  gave  indica- 
tion that  the  original  characteristics  survived  in  then*  full 
strength ;  and  it  was  a  strength  that  inspired  confidence, 
not  fear.  There  were  gray-haired,  patriarchal-looking  men 
among  the  groups,  whose  very  air  seemed  im2:)ressed  by  a 
sense  of  the  duties  of  the  day ;  nor  was  there  aught  that 
did  not  agree  with  the  object  of  the  journey  in  the  appear- 
ance of  even  the  youngest  and  least  thoughtful. 

As  I  proceeded,  I  came  up  with  a  few  people  who  were 
travelling  in  a  contrary  direction.  A  Secession  meeting- 
house has  lately  sprung  up  in  the  parish,  and  these  formed 
part  of  the  congregation.  A  path  nearly  obscured  by  grass 
and  weeds  leads  from  the  main  road  to  the  parish  church. 
It  was  with  difiiculty  I  could  trace  it,  and  there  were  none 
to  direct  me,  for  I  was  now  walking  alone.  The  parish 
burying-ground,  thickly  sprinkled  with  graves  and  tomb- 
stones, surrounds  the  church.  It  is  a  quiet,  solitary  spot  of 
great  beauty,  lying  beside  the  sea-shore ;  and  as  service 
had  not  yet  commenced,  I  whiled  away  half  an  hour  in 
sauntering  among  the  stones,  and  deciphering  the  inscrip- 
tions. I  could  trace  in  the  rude  monuments  of  this  retired 
little  spot  a  brief  but  impressive  history  of  the  district. 
The  older  tablets,  gray  and  shaggy  with  the  mosses  and 
lichens  of  three  centuries,  bear,  in  their  uncouth  semblan- 
ces of  the  unwieldy  battle-axe  and  double-handed  sword 
of  ancient  warfare,  the  meet  and  appropriate  symbols  of 
the   earlier  time.      But  the   more  modern  testify  to   the 


1  It  is  an  interesting  fact,  and  illustrates  happily  the  high  respect  with  which 
the  clansmen  must  liave  regarded  their  general,  that,  even  in  the  pre-ent  day, 
the  name  Gustavus  is  scarcely  more  common  in  Sweden  itself  than  in  tiiis  part 
of  the  country. 


THE    WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  67 

introduction  of  a  humanizing  influence.  They  speak  of  a 
life  after  death  in  the  "holy  texts"  described  by  the  poet, 
or  certify,  in  a  quiet  humility  of  style  which  almost  vouches 
for  their  truth,  that  the  sleepers  below  were  "  honest  men, 
of  blameless  character,  and  who  feared  God."  There  is 
one  tombstone,  however,  more  remarkable  than  all  the 
others.  It  lies  beside  the  church  door,  and  testifies,  in 
an  antique    inscription,    that    it    covers    the   remains  of 

the       "  GKEAT.MAN.OF.GOD.AJSTD.FAITHFYL.MINISTER.OF.IESVS 

CHRIST,"  who  had  endured  persecution  for  the  truth  in  the 
dark  days  of  Charles  and  his  brother.  He  had  outlived 
the  tyranny  of  the  Stuarts,  and,  though  worn  by  years  and 
sufferings,  had  returned  to  his  parish  on  the  Revolution,  to 
end  his  course  as  it  had  begun.  He  saw,  ere  his  death,  the 
law  of  patronage  abolished,  and  the  popular  right  virtually 
secured  ;  and  fearing  lest  his  people  might  be  led  to  abuse 
the  important  privilege  conferred  on  them,  and  calculating 
aright  on  the  abiding  influence  of  his  own  character  among 
them,  he  gave  charge  on  his  death-bed  to  dig  his  grave  in 
the  threshold  of  the  church,  that  they  might  regard  him  as 
a  sentinel  placed  at  the  door,  and  that  his  tombstone  might 
speak  to  them  as  they  j^assed  out  and  in.  The  inscription, 
which,  after  the  lapse  of  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  is 
still  perfectly  legible,  concludes  w^ith  the  following  remark- 
able works  :  —  "  This. stone. shall.bear.witxess.against. 

THE.PAEISHIONEES.OF IF.THEY.BRING.ANE. UNGODLY. 

MiNiSTER.iN.HERE."  Could  the  imagination  of  a  poet  have 
originated  a  more  striking  conception  in  connection  Mdth 
a  church  deserted  by  all  its  better  people,  and  whose  min- 
ister fattens  on  his  hire,  useless  and  contented? 

I  entered  the  church,  for  the  clergyman  had  just  gone  in. 
There  were  from  eight  to  ten  persons  scattered  over  the 
pews  below,  and  seven  in  the  galleries  above ;  and  these, 
as  there  were  no  more  "  John  Clerks  "  and  ^^ Michael  Tods  "^ 


1  "  Peter  Clark  and  Michael  Tod  were  the  only  individuals  who,  in  a  popula- 
tion of  three  tliousand.  souls,  attached  their  signatures  to  the  call  of  the  obnox- 
ious presentee,  Mr.  Young,  in  the  famous  Auchterarder  case."  — iVb^e  appended 
to  "  My  Schools  and  Schoolmasters."' 


68  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

in  the  parish,  composed  the  entire  congregation.  I  wrap- 
ped myself  up  in  my  phaid  and  sat  down,  and  the  service 
went  on  in  the  usual  course ;  but  it  sounded  in  my  ears 
like  a  miserable  mockery.  The  precentor  sung  almost 
alone ;  and,  ere  the  clergyman  had  reached  the  middle  of 
his  discourse,  which  he  read  in  an  unimpassioned,  monoto- 
nous tone,  nearly  one  half  his  skeleton  congregation  had 
fallen  asleep;  and  the  drowsy,  listless  expression  of  the 
others  showed  that,  for  every  good  purpose,  they  might 
have  been  asleep  too.  And  Sabbath  after  Sabbath  has 
this  unfortunate  man  gone  the  same  tiresome  round,  and 
with  exactly  the  same  effects,  for  the  last  twenty-three 
years,  at  no  time  regarded  by  the  better  clergymen  of  the 
district  as  really  their  brother,  on  no  occasion  recognized 
by  the  parish  as  virtually  its  minister,  with  a  dreary  vacancy 
and  a  few  indifferent  hearts  inside  his  church,  and  the  stone 
of  the  Covenanter  at  the  door!  Against  whom  does  the 
inscription  testify?  —  for  the  people  have  escaped.  Against 
the  patron,  the  intruder,  and  the  law  of  Bolingbroke,  — 
the  Dr.  Robertsons  of  the  last  age,  and  the  Dr.  Cooks  of 
the  present.  It  is  well  to  learn  from  this  hapless  parish 
the  exact  sense  in  which,  in  a  different  state  of  matters,  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Young  would  have  been  constituted  minister  of 
Auchterarder.  It  is  well,  too,  to  learn,  that  there  may  be 
vacancies  in  the  Church  Vvdiere  no  blank  appears  in  the 
Almanac. 

It  is  scarce  necessary  to  remark,  that  the  present  position 
of  the  Church  is  a  position  which  she  has  often  occupied, 
or  that  the  agitated  question  is  one  which  she  has  agitated 
a  thousand  times  before.  There  is  comfort  in  the  fact  that 
we  need  only  refer  to  her  history,  to  show  that  all  her  bet- 
ter names  have  been  invariably  on  the  one  side;  and  that 
the  highest  praise  to  which  her  opponents  can  pretend  is 
that  some  of  them  have  been  fortunate  enough  to  have 
attained  to  a  negative  character,  and  that  some  of  them 
have  had  the  merit  of  being  equivocal.  There  is  comfort, 
too,  in  the  reflection  that  what  is  morally  wrong  cannot  be 


THE    WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  69 

logically  right ;  and  that  not  only  the  worthier  men,  but 
also  the  sounder  arguments,  are  to  be  found  on  the  better 
side.  It  is  indeed  no  easy  matter  to  prove  that  our  clergy- 
men should  not  receive  the  people's  money  for  the  people's 
good,  unless  they  first  recognize  an  uncontrollable  right 
of  inisapjilication  in  the  patron;  that  Bolingbroke's  Act 
and  the  Eeform  Bill  should  alike  remain  the  law  of  the 
land,  to  blend  more  than  the  civil  liberty  of  the  freest 
states  of  antiquity  with  well-nigh  the  ghostly  despotism 
of  Turkey  or  of  Rome ;  or  that  men,  through  a  sense  of 
the  high  duty  which  they  owe  to  God,  should  obey  an 
unjust  law,  through  which  God's  own  laws  are  to  be  nulli- 
fied, his  gospel  repressed,  and  the  consciences  of  his  people 
wronged  and  offended.  And  yet  such  are  the  difficulties 
of  at  least  our  more  extreme  opposers.  The  Lord  Presi- 
dent of  the  Court  of  Session  is  unquestionably  an  able  and 
respectable  lawyer;  but  it  is  an  over-task  for  even  the 
Lord  President  himself  to  be  correct  and  rational  when  in 
the  wrong ;  and  his  address  in  the  Lethendy  case  is  per- 
haps not  less  valuable  as  an  illustration  of  the  kind  of  facts 
and  arguments  of  which  our  opponents  can  alone  avail 
themselves,  than  even  his  lordship's  ablest  and  most 
impressive  addresses  in  their  direct  and  proper  character. 

We  are  shown  by  Locke,  in  his  wonderful  Essay,  that 
"  confusions  making  it  a  difficulty  to  separate  two  things 
that  should  be  separated,  concern  always  two  ideas,  and 
those  most  which  most  approach  one  another."  His  lord- 
ship, however,  confounds  ideas  the  most  distinct  —  things 
which  do  not  belong  to  even  the  same  category.  He  mis- 
takes a  duty  enjoined  for  a  power  conferred ;  and  finds  a 
mystery,  which  he  confesses  himself  unable  to  comprehend, 
in  the  absurdity  into  which  the  mistake  necessarily  leads. 
The  article  in  our  Confession  quoted  by  his  lordship  in- 
structs the  civil  magistrate  "to  take  order  that  unity  and 
peace  be  preserved  in  the  Church ;  that  the  truth  of  God 
be  kept  pure  and  entire;  that  blasphemies  and  heresies  be 
suppressed ;  corruptions  and  abuses  in  worship  and  disci- 


70  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

pline  prevented  or  reformed ; "  and  it  empowers  him,  the 
better  to  fulfil  the  enjoined  duty,  to  call  synods,  regarding 
which  he  is  instructed  "  to  provide  that  whatever  is  trans- 
acted in  them  he  according  to  the  mind  of  God^  Now, 
what,  I  ask,  can  well  be  simpler  than  this,  especially  the 
concluding  portion  of  the  passage,  which  seems  intended 
to  guard  against  the  very  possibility  of  misconception,  and 
throws  so  clear  a  light  on  what  goes  before?  The  mind 
of  God  is  the  pure  and  perfect  code  embodied  in  God's 
word,  —  the  sublime  doctrines  wdnch  God  reveals,  the 
high  duties  which  he  enjoins,  the  pure  morality  which 
he  inculcates;  and  the  magistrate,  as  the  responsible  sub- 
ject of  this  absolute  and  immutable  code,  is  commanded  to 
take  order  that  he  not  only  conform  to  it  himself,  but  that 
the  Church  conform  to  it  too.  Strange,  however,  as  it  may 
seem,  this  explanatory  and  restricting  clause  —  this  clause 
which  lowers  the  delegated  trust  into  a  strictly  defined 
duty  —  his  lordship  confesses  himself  totally  unable  to 
understand.^  He  had  explored  the  passage  with  so  engross- 
ing and  definite  a  conception  of  the  meaning  he  had  ex- 
pected to  find  in  it,  as  to  have  no  eyes  for  the  meaning 
which  it  actually  conveys.  The  determining  and  defining 
clause,  which  asserts  the  supremacy  of  the  Divine  law, 
appeared  to  him  somehow  as  merely  a  splendid  obscurity, 
which  sanctioned  the  exercise  of  a  great,  though  mysterious 
and  undefinable,  power.  I  doubt  not  that  the  ministers  at 
the  bar  understood  the  i^assage  a  little  better,  and  accejDted 

1  "  What  is  the  precise  meaning  of  that  passage  I  am  sure  I  don't  know,  or 
what  is  the  jurisdiction  it  gives  to  the  civil  magistrate:  but  it  must  allude  to 
something  which  is  not  temporal.  The  mind  of  God  is  a  spiritual  concern,  and 
thej'  [magistrates]  are  to  take  care  that  the  things  transacted  in  synods  be  ac- 
cording to  the  mind  of  God.  Surely  this  does  not  exclude  the  civil  magistrate 
from  interfering  in  ecclesiastical  concerns.  If  words  be  capable  of  conveying  a 
meaning,  it  certainly  gives  to  the  civil  authority  more  power  than  they  have  ever 
exercised,  or  than,  I  believe,  it  was  ever  meant  they  should  exercise;  but  it 
must  allude  to  more  than  mere  temporal  concerns.  In  short,  I  hope  that,  on 
sober  reflection,  the  Church  will  see  that  they  cannot  remain  in  the  position  of 
an  Established  Church,  and  yet  resist  the  law  which  lias  made  them  an  Estab- 
lished Church." — Lord  President's  Address,  JReport,  Scot.  Guard.,  18th  June, 
1839. 


THE    WHIGUISM    OP    THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  71 

it  as  a  sign  that  they  were  not  standing  on  unsafe  or  dis- 
honorable ground.  It  j^roved  j^^i'^ectly  impracticable  on 
this  occasion  for  every  purpose  of  the  court.  It  passed  no 
censure  on  the  minister  of  Lethendy  ;  denounced  no  threat 
against  the  Presbytery  of  Dunkeld ;  and  if  it  erajDowers 
Lords  of  Session  and  their  presidents  to  enter  our  church 
courts,  it  gives  them  at  least  no  encouragement  to  vote  on 
the  secular  side.  The  passage  was  introduced  into  our 
Confession,  in  its  present  form,  rather  more  than  a  hun- 
dred and  ninety  years  ago ;  and  there  has  it  remained  ever 
since,  as  unchanged  to  suit  the  profligacy  of  Charles  II.,  or 
the  prostitution  and  subserviency  of  his  courts  of  law,  as 
when  the  good  President  Forbes  employed  his  whole  Sab- 
baths in  studying  the  "  mind  of  God,"  and  the  rest  of  the 
week  in  advancing  the  weal  of  his  country,  and  in  the  con- 
scientious discharge  of  the  high  duties  of  his  oflice.  .  It 
extended  to  the  magistracy  exactly  the  same  power  which 
it  does  now,  and  breathed  exactly  the  same  spirit,  when 
Middleton  introduced  the  unhappy  act  which  overturned 
Presbyterianism  in  Scotland,  —  when  the  apostate  Lauder- 
dale renounced  the  Covenant,  to  become  the  remorseless 
persecutor  of  his  brethren,  —  when  the  criminals  of  our 
courts  were  the  martyrs  of  our  Church,  —  when  the  heroic 
Mackail  stood  before  the  Lords  of  Council  with  his  leg 
fixed  in  the  boot,  and  the  executioner  struck  the  wedge 
till  the  bone  was  splintered,  and  the  blood  and  marrow 
spurted  in  their  faces. 

Some  of  his  lordship's  other  mistakes  and  misconceptions 
are  scarcely  less  striking  than  the  one  just  exposed.  Error 
and  misstatement  creep  into  his  very  facts,  — error,  too,  of 
so  important  a  nature  as  entirely  to  alter  their  illustrative 
scope  and  character.  It  is  unnecessary  to  allude  a  second 
time  to  his  lordship's  Episcopal  argument,  so  well  backed 
by  Greek,  and  so  ill  supported  by  history.  In  his  allusion 
to  the  eminent  Father  of  the  Secession,  he  is  still  more 
palpably  unfortunate.  He  tells  our  better  clergymen  that 
they  have  but   one   alternative  in  the   matter;   that   an 


72  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

implicit  submission  to  the  law  of  patronage  is  one  of  the 
express  conditions  on  wliich  they  receive  the  support  of 
the  state ;  and  that  they  must  either  unresistingly  subject 
themselves  to  this  conditional  law,  or,  like  the  good  Eben- 
ezer  Erskine,  throw  up  their  livings,  and  quit  the  Establish- 
ment: for  this  excellent  and  eminent  man,  finding,  as  his 
lordship  states  the  case,  that  he  could  neither  remain  in 
the  Establishment  without  submitting  to  the  law,  nor  yet 
submit  to  the  law  without  offending  against  his  conscience, 
judiciously  and  honestly  settled  the  point  by  withdrawing 
from  the  Church  and  founding  the  Secession.  What  ob- 
scure and  nameless  historian  could  have  so  entirely  misled 
his  lordship  ?  The  statement  is  totally  untrue.  Erskine 
did  not  withdraw  from  the  Establishment :  he  was  thrust 
out,  and  thrust  out  for  this,  —  that  he  broadly  and  point- 
edly condemned  the  Church  for  doing  what  the  court  now 
requires  of  it  to  do,  and  for  not  doing  what,  in  direct  op- 
position to  the  court,  it  has  now  done.  He  took  his  stand, 
with  his  three  brethren,  on  the  broad  constitutional  ground 
which  had  been  occupied  by  all  the  better  men  of  the 
Church  from  the  Reformation  downwards;  and,  outnum- 
bered and  overborne  in  an  inferior  ecclesiastical  court,  he 
appealed  to  the  highest.  And  there,  too,  he  was  outnum- 
bered and  overborne ;  but,  strong  in  the  goodness  of  his 
cause  and  the  approval  of  his  conscience,  he  would  neither 
recognize  its  censures  as  just,  nor  succumb  to  its  authority. 
And  the  court,  by  a  commission  of  its  members,  proceeded 
to  cast  him  out  as  a  disturber  of  its  peace.  It  "  loosened 
his  pastoral  relation  to  his  charge,"  declared  his  "parish 
vacant,"  pronounced  him  "  no  longer  a  minister  of  the 
Cliurch  of  Scotland,"  and  prohibited  all  the  acknowledged 
ministers  of  the  Church  from  "  employing  him  in  any  min- 
isterial function."  Against  this  unjust  sentence  Erskine 
protested  and  appealed;  and  the  document  is  recorded, 
not  in  the  journals  of  the  assembly,  but  in  the  heart  and 
mind  of  the  country.  He  "  protested  that  his  pastoral 
relation  to  his  people  should  still  be  held  firm  and  valid ; " 


THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  73 

that  he  should  "  still  hold  communion  with  all  and  every- 
one who  adhered  to  the  principles  of  the  true  Presbyterian 
Church  of  Scotland ; "  that  it  should  "  still  be  held  lawful 
for  him  to  exercise  the  keys  of  doctrine,  discipline,  and 
government,  according  to  the  word  of  God,  the  Confes- 
sion of  Faith,  and  the  constitution"  of  this,  the  "Cove- 
nanted Church,"  by  which  he  so  tenaciously  held ;  and 
finally,  in  the  hope  of  a  better  spirit  in  the  future,  he 
'•'- appealed  to  the  first  free^  faithful^  and  reforming  General 
Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland ;^^'^  nor  are  there 
many  of  our  worthier  ministers  who  do  not  recognize  the 
full  justice  of  the  appeal.  Such  are  the  facts  of  the  case, 
as  sanctioned  by  authentic  history,  in  opposition  to  those 
adduced  by  his  lordship.  But  in  passing  from  the  illustra- 
tion to  the  principle  illustrated,  it  cannot  be  improper  to 
ask,  what  sort  of  estimate  has  this  shrewd  and  able  magis- 
trate formed  of  the  strength  and  importance  of  the  party 
which  he  so  coolly  recommends  either  to  submit  to  the 
law  of  patronage,  or  to  retire  from  the  Church  ?  Has  he 
not  mistaken  the  staff,  on  this  occasion,  for  the  main  army, 
—  the  representatives  of  the  million  for  the  million  itself? 
Or  is  it  really  the  tens  and  hundreds  of  thousands  —  the 
preponderating  majority  and  strength  of  the  country,  with 
all  their  hereditary  hatred  and  acquired  dislike  of  the 
iniquitous  and  deprecated  law  —  to  whom  he  submits  the 
alternative  ?  Retire  from  the  Church !  The  Church  can- 
not exist  without  us.  We  are  the  thews  and  sinews,  the 
blood  and  nerves,  of  the  Church.  Our  support  is  essen- 
tially necessary  to  secure  their  temporalities  to  even  the 
clergymen  who  value  us  least ;  and  the  secession  of  our 
party  would  be  the  inevitable  ruin  of  our  opponents. 

The  misfortune  of  the  Lord  President's  address  consisted 
simply  in  this,  —  it  was  a  great  deal  too  clear.  His  lord- 
ship had  to  defend  what  was  in  itself  radically  wrong ; 


1  For  an  impartial  and  well-written  account  of  the  origin  of  the  Secession,  see 
"  Cbambers's  Lives  of  Eminent  Scotsmen,"  "  Life  of  Erskine,"  vol.  ii.  p.  230,  etc. 


74  THE    WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

and,  instead  of  entrenching  himself  behind  acts  of  Par- 
liament happy  in  their  ambiguities,  and  precedents  of 
the  Court  which  may  in  some  instances  be  but  recorded 
mistakes,  he  came  imprudently  out  into  the  open  field  of 
reason  and  of  Scripture.  Arguments  drawn  from  the  mere 
law  of  the  case  could  have  been  coaibated  by  few ;  but  in 
drawing  them  from  the  Bible  —  a  book  at  once  the  most 
decided  on  questions  of  morals,  and  the  most  extensively 
known — and  from  reason,  the  common  gift  and  distinguish- 
ing characteristic  of  tlie  species,  he  addressed  himself  to 
the  understandings  of  the  entire  community.  And  hence, 
obviously  enough,  the  people  have  been  enabled  to  change 
places  with  his  lordship.  It  is  alike  contrary  to  the  whole 
scope  of  reason  and  of  Scripture  that  obedience  be  ren- 
dered to  an  unjust  law;  nor  can  there  be  anything  more 
exquisitely  absurd  than  to  confound  such  an  obedience  with 
the  mere  recognition  of  the  power  and  authority  of  the 
magistrate.  "  Our  Saviour,"  says  his  lordship,  "  pleaded 
no  exemption  from  the  jurisdiction  of  the  Sanhedrim." 
True ;  but  our  Saviour  never  obeyed  an  unjust  law.  "Paul 
pleaded  before  Felix,"  Festus,  "and  Agrippa,  and,"  as  the 
edicts  against  the  Christians  were  not  yet  framed,  "he 
appealed  to  Caesar."  Undisputably ;  but  Paul  did  not  obey 
an  unjust  law.  Nor  are  we  left  to  mere  inference  in  the 
matter.  Peter  and  John,  when  brought  before  a  council  of 
rulers  and  Sadducee  elders,  assigned  good  and  sufficient 
reasons  why  they  should  not  submit  themselves  to  the  will 
or  authority  of  men^  if  opposed  to  that  of  God ;  and  the 
argument  still  survives  to  urge  on  our  consciences,  that 
we  yield  not  obedience  to  an  unjust  law.  Nay,  it  is  only 
necessary,  in  deciding  the  question,  to  inquire  why  the 
churches  have  been  persecuted  and  the  martyrs  slain.  His 
lordship's  law  does  not  lie  so  much  within  reach  as  his  lord- 
ships facts  and  arguments.  It  is  exceedingly  natural,  how- 
ever, to  judge  of  it  from  the  company  which  it  keeps,  and 
to  bear  in  mind  that  very  eminent  lawyers  have  arrived  at 
very  opposite  conclusions  on  the  point,  and  entertain  very 


THE    WHIGGISM    OF    THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  75 

different  opinions.  The  independence  of  the  Church  seems 
as  decidedly  recognized  by  statute  as  the  rights  of  the  pa- 
tron; and,  besides,  are  we  not  assured  '■'•that  the  laio  and 
the  opinion  of  the  judge  are  not  always  convertible  ter7ns, 
or  one  and  the  same  thing,  since  it  somethnes  may  happen 
that  the  judge  may  mistake  the  law''''?  Now,  this  must 
surely  be  good  sense,  for  it  is  according  to  reason  and 
experience;  and  it  must  necessarily  be  good  law,  for  it 
occurs  in  Blackstone. 

It  is  fully  admitted,  however,  that  the  decision  of  our 
courts  has  practically  determined  the  law,  and  that  the 
Church  is  at  this  moment  as  entirely  at  the  mercy  of  the 
patron  as  if  her  liberties  had  never  been  asserted  nor  her 
independence  recognized.  The  Court  of  Session  has  means 
at  command,  far  more  convincing  than  argument,  to  com- 
pel the  admission ;  and  the  readiness  to  employ  these  is 
fully  equal  to  the  ability.  We  have  already  seen  one  of 
the  Pi-esbyteries  of  our  Church  honored  by  a  public  rebuke, 
and  fines  and  imprisonment  hang  over  another.  But  the 
duty  of  our  ministers  is  not  the  less  clear.  They  owe  it 
to  themselves  and  to  their  people,  to  their  country  and  to 
their  God,  that  they  neither  obey  this  iniquitous  law,  nor 
yet  quit  the  Establishment.  Either  alternative  involves 
the  ruin  of  the  Church  of  Scotland;  and  who  is  there  that 
has  studied  our  country's  history  in  the  true  spirit,  or  has 
acquainted  himself  with  the  temper  of  the  present  time, 
and  the  depth  and  force  of  the  national  character,  who  can 
believe  that  the  Church  of  Scotland  is  destined  to  fill 
alone  ?  There  is  more  at  stake  in  the  agitated  question 
than  either  rights  of  patronage  or  the  temporalities  of  the 
Church ;  and  our  Earls  of  Kinnoull,  who  have  wealth,  and 
lands,  and  titles,  as  well  as  patronages,  to  lose,  and  our 
Lord  Chancellors  and  Lord  Presidents,  who,  like  our  clergy, 
derive  their  support  from  an  establishment,  would  do  well 
to  beware  that  in  this  season  of  tempests  and  tornadoes 
they  unsettle  not  the  ballast  of  the  state.  There  are  ele- 
ments of  tremendous  power  slumbering,  and  but  partially 


76  THE   WHIQGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

slumbering,  among  the  masses;  and  woe  to  the  people  — 
a  double  woe  to  the  aristocracy  of  the  land  —  if  these 
once  awaken  in  the  fierce  and  untamable  fury  of  their 
nature,  to  bid  defiance  to  every  law,  and  to  trample  on 
every  privilege.  God,  to  avert  the  calamity,  and  in  his 
great  and  wonted  care  for  our  country,  is  awakening  the 
old  spirit  of  the  Church,  —  that  free  and  noble  spirit  which, 
alike  opposed  to  despotism  in  the  ruler  and  to  license  in 
the  people,  can  brook  neither  the  grinding  tyranny  of  the 
few,  nor  yet  the  fiercer  and  more  savage  intolerance  of  the 
many ;  and  if  his  design  of  mercy  be  thwarted  through  a 
selfish  and  short-sighted  policy,  the  judgment  shall  assur- 
edly fall  heaviest  on  the  classes  which  offend  most.  In 
the  event  of  a  popular  convulsion,  all  must  necessarily 
suffer,  and  suffer  to  no  good  end.  It  is  an  immutable  law 
of  Deity  that  the  blessings  of  freedom  can  be  enjoyed  by 
only  wise  and  virtuous  men,  and  that  the  uncultured  and 
the  vicious,  in  their  vain  attempts  to  secure  to  themselves 
an  ideal  liberty,  for  which  they  are  unfitted,  shall  struggle 
fruitlessly  in  a  miserable  and  delusive  cycle  of  crime  and 
sorrow,  that  ever  returns  into  itself.  All  would  necessa- 
rily suffer.  But  it  could  not  be  by  the  common  people  that 
the  infliction  would  be  felt  most  severely ;  nor,  were  the 
hour  already  come,  would  the  writer  of  these  pages  ex- 
change his  humble  lot,  with  its  various  adjuncts,  necessary 
or  peculiar,  for  perhaps  even  the  highest.  He  has  but  lit- 
tle to  lose  or  to  provoke  envy;  he  has  been  accustomed  to 
hardship  and  fatigue ;  he  is  in  the  full  vigor  of  manhood ; 
he  could  fight  as  a  common  soldier  in  the  ranks ;  and,  if 
he  survived  the  struggle,  he  might  find  himself  occupying 
a  not  lower  level  at  its  close  than  at  its  commencement. 
But  tli«  aged  judges,  the  wealthy  patrons,  the  delicately- 
nurtured  aristocracy  of  Scotland,  the  men  who  have  so 
much  to  lose,  which  in  a  popular 'convulsion  could  not  fail 
to  be  lost,  nay,  even  the  more  eloquent  orators  and  more 
vigorous  thinkers  of  the  age,  who  have  yet  to  give  their 
first  proof  of  military  talent,  —  what  fate  do  they  augur 


THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL.  77 

to  themselves?  Have  they  secured  the  position  which 
they  are  to  occupy  in  the  struggle,  or  ascertained  the  exact 
rank  which  they  are  to  bear  among  the  new  aristocracy,  or 
under  the  second  Cromwell  ?  They  think  miserably  amiss 
if  they  think  the  people  could  not  find  leaders  without 
employing  them ;  nor  do  they  well  if,  instead  of  calculat- 
ing upon  the  formidable  depth  and  momentum  of  the  yet 
unbroken  waters,  they  merely  look  (with,  I  grant,  the  nat- 
ural and  proper  contempt)  on  the  froth  and  spume  which 
idly  bubbles  on  the  surface,  —  on  the  shallow  and  futile 
talent  of  demagogues  and  declaimers,  so  noisy  and  obtru- 
sive now,  but  which,  with  the  first  breach  in  the  barrier, 
would  be  forever  engulfed  in  the  torrent. 

It  is  an  unchallenged  truth,  that  it  is  not  from  reason  we 
derive  our  highest  degree  of  knowledge,  and  that  we  lower 
tlie  certainty  of  the  intuitive  if  we  but  equal  it  with  the 
merely  inferable.  It  is  according  to  the  nature  of  the 
human  mind  that  an  ascertained  fact  should  weigh  more 
than  even  the  most  ingenious  argument ;  and  it  is  on  this 
principle  that  the  experience  of  fourteen  years,  spent  in 
the  workshed  and  the  barrack,  in  almost  every  district  of 
the  country,  and  among  almost  every  class  of  the  common 
people,  has  had  infinitely  more  to  do  in  influencing  my 
opinion  regarding  the  high  importance  of  the  present 
struggle,  and  the  imminent  danger  of  the  community, 
than  all  that  even  the  more  rational  waiters  for  a  merely 
intellectual  millennium  have  urged  on  the  one  hand,  or  all 
that  ever  the  abler  and  better  Voluntaries  have  argued  on 
the  other.  I  have  not  yet  discovered  the  elements  of  the 
coming  happiness  among  the  immense  masses  broken  loose 
from  religion.  And  though  I  can  believe,  with  even  Vol- 
taire, that  great  prosperity  has  proved  prejudicial  to  the 
Church,  I  cannot  see  that  it  is  from  prosperity  the  Church 
of  Scotland  has  most  to  dread  at  present;  nor  have  I 
found  much  satisfaction  in  balancing  matters  between  the 
ascetics  of  Upper  Egypt,  or  the  more   than   half-infidel 

7* 


78  THE   WHIGGISM   OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL. 

gnostics  of  the  East,  and  the  corrupt  and  tyrannical 
churchmen  established  by  Constantine.  Arguments  drawn 
from  so  remote  and  misty  a  period  have  but  the  effect  of 
rendering  the  discussion  long  and  the  inference  uncertain. 
I  have  been  enabled  to  arrive  at  conclusions  much  more 
satisfactory,  to  at  least  my  own  judgment,  than  w^hat  I 
have  found  among  the  Voluntaries  themselves.  I  am  not 
ignorant  that  the  party  has  its  truly  excellent  lay  adher- 
ents —  its  good  and  faithful  ministers.  I  have  associated 
for  months  together  with  pious  Voluntaries  from  whom  I 
differed  wonderfully  little ;  and  Sabbath  after  Sabbath 
have  I  accompanied  them  to  the  meeting-house,  to  listen 
with,  I  trust,  more  than  pleasure  to  some  of  their  better 
divines ;  and  this  in  districts  —  and  there  are  still  too 
many  such  —  where  the  gospel  is  not  preached  in  the 
Establishment.  It  has  not  escaped  rae,  however,  that  the 
religious  men  of  the  party  are  comparatively  few ;  that, 
save  for  purely  political  purposes,  they  act  but  feebly  on 
the  mass  to  which  they  are  attached,  and  not  at  all  for 
good  on  the  formidable  masses  beyond;  that,  in  short, 
they  form  merely  the  "  silver  lining  of  the  cloud,"  and  that 
there  is  enough  of  the  smoke  and  stench  of  infidelity  in  its 
obscurer  recesses  to  render  a  Voluntary  triumph  the  bane 
of  the  country.  The  conscientious  motives  of  Dr.  Wardlaw 
and  his  better  friends  operate  but  feebly  and  inefficiently 
on  the  thousands  who,  holding  ostensibly  by  the  same 
opinions,  make  common  cause  with  these  good  but  mis- 
taken men,  for  accomplishing  the  same  object.  I  have 
met  with  other  than  pious  Voluntaries  —  and  this,  too, 
in  immensely  greater  numbers  —  with  unsatisfied  and 
restless  spirits,  wdio,  had  not  the  controversy  been  agitated 
in  its  present  form,  would  have  opposed  themselves,  not 
to  the  Establishment,  bat  to  Christianity  itself;  and,  with 
no  secular  interest  involved  in  the  quarrel,  save  in  its 
remoter  consequences,  I  have  deliberately  taken  my  stand 
on  the  side  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  not  more  influenced 


THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE    OLD    SCHOOL.  79 

by  a  cherished  recollection  of  her  past  services  in  the 
cause  of  God  and  humanity,  or  by  a  well-grounded  confi- 
dence in  those  j^regnant  elements  of  good  which  she  still 
so  largely  retains  in  her  constitution,  than  from  an  assured 
conviction  that  the  animating  spirit  of  her  opponents  is 
less  an  inspiration  than  a  possession.  It  is  not  this  spirit 
of  modern  Voluntaryism,  so  unlike  that  of  the  missionary, 
which  is  to  reestablish  the  old  character  of  our  country,  — 
to  substitute  a  pure  Christianity  for  the  semi-barbarous 
and  unreasoning  infidelity  of  our  larger  towns,  —  to  fill 
our  hamlets  with  such  men  as  the  cotter  described  by  the 
poet, — to  sanction  the  testimony  of  some  second  Kirkton, 
or  to  justify  the  eulogium  of  some  future  Whitefield.  It 
is  easy  to  distinguish  between  a  disorganizing  influence 
and  a  reforming  principle,  —  between  the  "revived  opin- 
ions" of  the  sixteenth  century  and  the  new  opinions  of  the 
nineteenth,  —  between  a  Scotch  Parliament  suppressing 
a  corrupt  Establishment  because  it  was  Popish,  and  a 
French  convention  annihilating  a  similar  institution  be- 
cause it  was  Christian.  It  is  reformation,  not  change,  — 
Christianity,  not  Voluntaryism,  —  that  can  alone  save  our 
country. 

There  is  a  palpable  confusion  of  idea  in  the  main  argu- 
ment of  the  party.  It  confounds  things  essentially  differ- 
ent —  the  provided  temporalities  with  the  secular  spirit. 
It  regards  a  mere  accidental  connection  as  a  necessary 
and  inevitable  consequence;  and  could  the  absurdity  occur 
in  any  other  than  a  semi-theological  controversy,  we  might 
hear  the  incompetency  of  Cope  or  Burgoyne  attributed  to 
the  parliamentary  grant  for  the  pay  of  the  army,  and  the 
brutality  and  gross  injustice  of  Jeflfries  to  the  establishment 
of  the  court  over  which  he  presided.  We  are  content  to 
trace  the  well-marked  distinction  in  both  the  past  history 
and  present  position  of  the  Church  of  Scotland ;  and  are 
in  no  danger  whatever  of  confounding  the  vantage-ground 
which  her  better  ministers  have   occupied  to  such  good 


80  THE   WHIGGISM    OF   THE   OLD    SCHOOL. 

purpose,  from  the  days  of  Knox  until  now,  with  that 
secular  spirit  which  has  oppressed  and  persecuted  her  in 
both  the  earlier  and  later  periods  of  her  existence, — in  the 
one  as  an  Episcopal  form,  in  the  other  as  a  Patronage 
principle. 


LITERARY  CHARACTER  OF  KNOX. 


It  is  one  of  the  main  distinctions  of  works  produced  by 
the  master  minds,  whether  in  literature  or  the  fine  arts, 
that  they  contain  a  large  amount  of  thought.  There  are 
books  of  no  great  bulk  which  it  seems  scarce  possible  to 
exhaust,  and  pictures  which,  after  one  had  looked  at  them 
for  hours  together,  appear  just  as  fresh  and  new  as  at  first 
when  one  comes  to  look  at  them  again.  The  works  of 
Hogarth  are  scarcely  less  remarkable  for  vigor  and  con- 
densation of  thought  than  the  works  of  Shakspeare ;  nor 
is  Sir  David  Wilkie  a  less  fascinating  author  than  Sir 
Walter  Scott,  or  a  less  masterly  delineator  of  character. 
Both  these  great  artists — the  living  and  the  dead  one,  Ho- 
garth and  Sir  David  —  have  shown  how  possible  it  is  for 
men  of  genius  to  think  vigorously  upon  canvas ;  and  that 
a  clear,  readable,  condensed  style  may  be  attained  in  paint- 
ing as  certainly  as  in  writing.  One  never  tires  of  their 
productions.  They  tell  admirable  stories  in  so  admirable 
a  manner,  that  the  oftener  we  peruse  them  the  better  are 
we  pleased ;  and  almost  every  story  has  its  moral.  There 
is,  however,  one  of  the  most  readable  of  Sir  David's  pic- 
tures which  contains  what  we  have  been  inclined  to  think 
a  gross  historical  error,  and  belies  the  character  of  a  very 
great  man.  His  "  Knox  preaching  before  the  Lords  of  the 
Congregation"  is  unquestionably  a  splendid  composition, 
full  of  thought  and  sentiment ;  but  the  main  figure  is 
defective.     It  represents  not  the  powerful  and  persuasive 


82  THE    LITERARY    CHARACTER    OF   KNOX. 

orator,  whose  unmatched  eloquence  led  captive  the  great 
minds  of  the  country,  but  the  mere  fanatical  leader  of  an 
unthinking  rabble.  It  reminds  us  of  the  narrow-minded 
heresiarch  described  by  Hume  and  Gilbert  Stuart,  not 
of  the  vigorous-thoughted  worthy  apostrophized  by  the 
noble  Milton  as  "Knox,  the  reformer  of  a  kingdom,"  —  "a 
great  man,  animated  by  the  Spirit  of  God."^ 

The  labors  of  the  late  Dr.  M'Crie  have  done  much  to 
disabuse  the  public  mind  regarding  the  true  character  of 
Knox,  moral  and  intellectual.  Never  before  did  an  honest 
and  able  man  turn  the  stream  of  truth  through  such  an 


1  Mr.  Carlyle,  in  his  letter  to  David  Laing,  Esq.,  of  the  Signet  Library,  Edin- 
burgh, on  the  project  of  a  National  Exhibition  of  Scottish  Portraits,  refers  to 
this  work  of  Wilkie's  in  the  following  terms:  "  No  picture  that  I  ever  saw  by  a 
man  of  genius  can  well  be,  in  regard  to  all  earnest  purposes,  a  more  perfect  fail- 
ure. Can  anything,  in  fact,  be  more  entirely  useless  for  earnest  purposes,  more 
'M?ilike  what  ever  could  have  been  the  reality,  than  that  gross  Energumen,  more 
like  a  boxing-butcher,  whom  he  has  set  into  a  pulpit  surrounded  with  draperies, 
with  fat-shouldered  women  and  play-actor  men  in  mail,  and  labelled  Knox?" 
With  all  deference  to  authority  so  high  and  emphasis  so  great,  it  may  be  per- 
mitted us  to  doubt  whether  Mr.  Miller  and  Mr.  Carlyle  have  done  full  justice  to 
Wilkie's  picture.  It  was  legitimate  for  the  artist  to  paint  Knox  as  a  preacher, 
and  in  this  character  his  representation  is  certainly  not  unlike  what  the  reality 
would  have  been.  Knox  in  the  pulpit  was  one  of  the  fieriest  incarnations  of  the 
perfervidum  ingenium  of  his  countrymen  —  more  fiery  even,  were  that  possible, 
than  Chalmers.  James  Melville  heard  him  preach  in  1571,  the  year  before  his 
death.  Such  was  his  weakness,  that  he  went  leaning  on  a  staff,  his  neck  wrapped 
in  furs,  and  supported  by  Richard  Ballenden.  It  was  necessary  to  lift  him  to 
the  pulpit,  and  on  first  entering  it  he  had  to  lean  for  a  time  to  draw  breath; 
"bot,"says  James,  in  his  old  dialect,  "  er  he  haid  done  with  his  sermone,  he 
was  sa  active  and  vigorous,  that  he  was  lyk  to  ding  the  pulpit  in  blads,  and  flie 
out  of  it."  Wilkie  had  probably  this  passage  in  view  wlien  he  designed  his  pic- 
ture, and  the  gestures  of  his  Knox  correspond  as  closely  as  possible  to  3[elville's 
last  words.  The  question  whether  Wilkie's  choice  of  a  moment  for  representing 
Knox  was  just  and  felicitous  —  whether  it  is  thus  we  ought  to  realize  to  our- 
selves the  Reformer  of  Scotland  —  resolves  itself  into  this  other,  how  far  the 
character  and  work  of  Knox  were  revealed  or  typified  in  his  pulpit  appearances. 
Restrained  by  the  conditions  of  his  art,  Wilkie  was  forced  to  choose  between  the 
Knox  of  the  council  chamber,  or  of  the  General  Assembly,  or  of  the  study,  and 
the  Knox  of  the  pulpit.  Perhaps  he  ought  to  have  painted  him  in  some  one  of 
the  former  characters  rather  than  in  the  latter.  But  the  Reformation  was  much 
the  work  of  preaching,  and  the  painter's  eye  of  AYilkie  was  correct  in  discerning 
how  Knox  preached.  It  may  be  suggested  that  before  the  Lords  of  the  Cougre- 
gatio^^he  would  have  subdued  his  fire.  It  is  not  likely.  In  the  pulpit  least  of 
all  would  he  fear  or  respect  the  face  of  man.  The  "  fat-shouldered  women,  and 
play-actor  men  in  mail,"  are  of  course  conventional  and  absurd.— Ed. 


THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF   KNOX.  83 

Augean  stable  of  calumny  and  falsehood  as  this  admirable 
writer  in  elucidating  the  history  of  the  Reformation.  He 
accomplished  such  a  revolution  in  public  opinion  regarding 
the  characters  and  events  of  the  period,  as  the  well-chosen 
hero  of  his  first  biography  accomplished  in  its  religion. 

The  reign  of  the  dissolute  and  totally  unprincipled 
Charles  II.  aftected  more  than  the  mode  and  framework 
of  English  literature ;  it  affected  its  spirit  also.  It  sub- 
stituted for  that  indigenous  school  to  which  Shakspeare 
and  Milton  belong,  and  which,  in  a  later  time,  has  been 
restored  by  Cowper  and  Wordsworth,  the  feeble  elegan- 
ces of  French  literature  in  the  reign  of  Louis  XIV.  It 
substituted  also  for  the  native  spirit  of  liberty  and  the  zeal 
of  truth,  the  servilities  of  French  flattery  and  French  false- 
hood. It  was  in  this  reign  of  degradation  —  the  reign  in 
which  the  glorious  "Paradise  Lost"  was  described  by  a  ser- 
vile versifier  as  a  "poem  remarkable  for  only  its  length"  — 
that  Knox  came  to  be  represented,  like  the  blind  poet  who 
so  honored  and  cherished  his  memory,  as  a  rude  and 
unmannerly  fanatic.  He  had  taught  kings  that  the  divine 
right  is  not  on  the  side  of  irresponsible  power,  butt)n  the 
side  of  a  well-regulated  popular  liberty.  He  had  shown, 
with  irresistible  effect,  that  whatever  God  has  commanded, 
men  have  a  "divine  right"  to  obey;  and  that  in  such  mat- 
ters kings  and  law-makers  have  no  right  whatever  to  inter- 
fere. And  the  hereditary  despots  could  neither  overturn 
his  logic  nor  forgive  him  the  lesson.  But  they  could  revile 
and  calumniate;  and  the  creatures  whom  they  half  fed, 
half  starved,  fixed  the  calumny  in  the  literature  of  the 
time.  There  was  a  decided  improvement  in  the  following 
age ;  but  the  tone  of  its  theology,  in  at  least  the  sister 
kingdom,  was  unfavorable  to  the  character  of  Knox.  It 
was  a  time  of  spiritual  death  in  the  English  Church  ;  and 
the  cry  of  fanaticism  raised  against  the  reformer,  chiefly 
on  a  civil  plea,  in  the  reign  of  Charles  IL,  was  prolonged, 
in  the  reign  of  Anne  and  the  earlier  Georges,  on  a  purely 
religious  one.     Naturally  enough,  his  beliefs  were  deemed 


84  THE  LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF  KNOX. 

absurd  and  irrational  by  the  defamers  and  depreciators  of 
Whitefield ;  and  there  was  no  M'Crie  to  tell  the  Rundles 
and  Atterburys  of  the  time  that  the  zealot  whom  they 
contemned  and  undervalued  had  been  a  fellow-laborer  in 
the  English  Church  with  its  Latimers  and  Cranmers,  and 
had  lent  his  assistance  in  framing  the  code  of  belief  which 
they  themselves  had  professed  to  receive,  but  for  which  in 
reality  they  cared  so  little. 

The  tone  of  our  Scottish  literature  in  the  last  century 
was  borrowed  in  part  from  our  English  neighbors,  and  in 
part  from  the  French.  Hume,  with  less  liveliness  but 
greater  original  powers  than  Voltaire,  condescended,  in  a 
considerable  degree,  to  imitate  the  historical  style  of  that 
volatile  and  accomplished  writer,  and  evinced  a  hostility 
equally  bitter  to  whatever  had  the  sacredness  of  religion 
to  recommend  it.  Robertson,  Smollett,  Kaimes,  Adam 
Smith,  Gilbert  Stuart,  Tytler,  and  Moore,  had  all  caught 
the  English  mode  and  the  English  spirit,  and  Avere,  in  at 
least  as  marked  a  degree  as  any  of  their  English  contem- 
poraries, tinctured  with  infidelity.  Hence,  in  part,  the 
disresi:>ect  shown  by  almost  all  these  writers  to  the  mem- 
ory of  Knox.  Many  of  them,  too,  had  imagination  enough 
to  evince  a  sympathy  for  the  misfortunes  of  Mary,  which 
a  sense  of  her  crimes  and  infamies  seems  to  have  checked 
in  the  friends  and  followers  who  would  not  fight  for  her  at 
Carberry  Hill,  and  who  struck  only  a  half-blow  in  her 
quarrel  at  Langside ;  and  the  man  who  could  attach  more 
importance  to  the  religion  of  a  country  than  to  the  smiles 
of  so  fine  a  woman,  was  characterized  as  rude  and  brutal. 
Robertson's  hostility  to  Knox  is  well  known.  Even  Hume 
—  who  was  by  much  too  cool  and  too  sagacious  a  man  to 
share  in  the  general  admiration  of  Mary — could  urge  with 
him,  as  an  argument  of  weight,  that,  if  he  only  gave  him 
up  the  princess,  "  he  would  have  the  compensatory  satis- 
faction of  seeing  the  reformer  made  sufiiciently  ridicu- 
lous." We  are  in  possession  of  a  volume  of  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Magazine,"  of  the  time  when  that  periodical  was 


THE   LITERARY    CHARACTER    OF   KNOX.  85 

edited  by  Gilbert  Stuart,  and  when  the  Moderate  clergy 
of  the  south  of  Scotland  were  the  chief  contributors.  The 
articles  are  temperate  throughout,  except  on  two  subjects, 
—  the  Secession  and  John  Knox;  but  when  these  are  in- 
troduced, we  find  that  the  writers  seem  to  have  lost  all 
command  of  temper,  or  to  have  regarded  as  legitimate  the 
foulest  epithets  of  opprobrium  and  reproach.  There  is,  in 
particular,  one  article  on  Knox,  written  apparently  by  the 
editor,  in  which  our  venerable  i;pformer  is  described  as 
mean,  illiterate,  narrow-minded,  cruel,  and  libidinous ;  and 
so  completely  does  the  engraver  for  the  work  appear  to 
have  entered  into  the  writer's  spirit,  that  the  figure  in  an 
accompanying  print  wants  only  horns  and  a  tail  to  render 
it  complete. 

But  whatever  Gilbert  Stuart  might  have  thought  of  the 
literature  of  John  Knox,  it  is  certain  the  contemporaries 
of  the  reformer,  both  friends  and  enemies,  estimated  it 
very  high.  Nor  in  the  present  time  are  we  without  data 
on  which  to  decide.  The  art  of  writing  history  in  the 
vernacular  tongue  was  not  an  art  of  the  age.  Even  the 
great  Bacon  failed  utterly  in  this  department,  nearly  an 
age  after,  and  produced,  in  his  History  of  Henry  YII.,  a 
work  which  has  been  quoted  liberally  by  both  Lord  Kaimes 
and  Sir  Richard  Steele,  to  show  how  very  badly  history 
may  be  written.  Knox's  "  History  of  the  Reformation"  is 
immensely  superior  to  the  history  of  Bacon.  It  displays 
more  freedom  and  more  power.  There  is  a  dramatic  effect 
in  some  of  the  dialogues  altogether  fascinating,  and  there 
are  touches  of  such  simple  pathos  in  the  narrative  that 
they  affect  even  to  tears.  We  would  instance  the  closing 
scene  in  the  life  of  the  martyr  Wishart,  as  described  in 
the  first  volume.  No  one  can  glance  over  the  j^assage 
without  being  convinced  that  the  heart  of  the  writer  was 
a  heart  tender  and  compassionate  in  the  first  degree.  "We 
doubt  not  that  it  was  written  with  wet  eyes  and  a  swelling 
heart.  He  relates,  with  almost  New  Testament  simplicity, 
how  the  "said  Mr.  George  Wishart,  departing  from  the 

8 


86  THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER    OP   KNOX. 

town  of  Haddington"  under  a  presentiment  of  death, 
"  took  good  night  forever  of  all  his  acquaintances,"  and 
"  liow  John  Knox  pressing  hard  to  go  with  him,"  the  de- 
voted man  said,  "  Nay,  return  to  your  children,  God's  peo- 
ple, and  God  bless  you ;  one  is  sufficient  for  a  sacrifice : " 
and  how  "the  said  John  Knox  unwillingly  obeyed."  He 
relates,  further,  after  narrating  the  apprehension  and  trial 
of  the  martyr,  "  that  the  fire  was  made  ready,  and  the 
stake,  at  the  west  port  of  the  Castle  of  St.  Andrews,  near 
to  the  Priory;  and  that,  directly  over  against  the  place, 
the  castle  windows  were  hung  with  rich  hangings,  and 
velvet  cushions  laid  for  the  cardinal  and  the  prelates,  who 
came  to  feast  their  eyes  with  the  torments  of  this  innocent 
man  ;  "  how  that,  "  dreading  lest  he  should  be  rescued  by 
his  friends,  the  cardinal  had  commanded  that  all  the  ord- 
nance of  the  castle  should  be  bent  right  against  the  place 
of  execution,  and  had  ordered  the  gunners  to  be  ready 
standing  by  their  guns,  until  such  time  as  his  victim  was 
burnt  to  ashes ; "  how,  "  all  this  being  done,  they  bound 
Mr.  George's  hands  behind  his  back,  and  with  sound  of 
trumpet  led  him  forth  with  the  soldiers  from  the  castle  to 
the  place  of  their  cruel  and  wicked  execution ; "  how,  "  as 
he  came  forth  of  the  castle  gate^  there  met  him  certain  beg- 
gars^ asking  of  him  alms^  for  GocVs  sake,  to  whom  he 
ansiDered,  ^ I  want  my  hands  wherewith  I  was  loont  to  give 
you  alms  /  hut  the  merciful  Lord,  of  his  benignity  and 
abundant  grace,  that  feedeth  all  m,en,  vouchsafe  to  give  you 
necessaries,  both  unto  your  body  and  souls  ; ' "  how,  "  after 
this,  he  was  led  to  the  fire  with  a  rope  about  his  neck  and 
a  chain  of  iron  about  his  middle ;  and  how,  kneeling  down 
beside  the  faggots,  he  rose  again,  and  thrice  said  these 
words,  'O  thou  Sovereign  of  the  world,  have  mercy  upon 
me;  Father  of  Heaven,  I  commend  my  spirit  into  thy  holy 
hands;'"  how,  "when  he  had  made  this  prayer,  he  turned 
unto  the  people  and  said,  '  I  beseech  you,  Christian  breth- 
ren and  sisters,  that  ye  be  not  offended  at  the  Word  of  God, 
for  the  afliiction  and  tormenl  which  ye  see  ready  prepared 


THE   LITERARY    CHARACTER    OF   KNOX.  87 

for  me;  but  I  exhort  you  that  you  love  the  Word  of  God, 
and  suffer  patiently,  and  with  a  comfortable  heart,  for  the 
Word's  sake,  which  is  your  undoubted  salvation  and  ever- 
lasting comfort;'"  how  that  "many  more  faithful  words  he 
spake  unto  them,  taking  no  heed  or  care  of  the  cruel  tor- 
tures prepared  for  him ; "  and  how,  "  by  and  by,  the  trum- 
pet sounding,  he  was  tied  to  the  stake,  and  the  fire  kin- 
dled ; "  how  "  the  captain  of  the  castle^  for  the  love  he  bore 
to  Mr,  Wishart^  drew  so  near  to  the  fire  that  the  flame 
thereof  did  him  harm^  and  urged  him  to  be  of  good  cour- 
age, and  to  beg  from  God  the  forgiveness  of  his  sins ; " 
and  how  the  martyr  answered  him  thus  from  the  flames, 
"'The  fire  torments  my  body,  but  no  ways  abates  my 
spirit ; ' "  how  "  then  Mr.  Wishart,  looking  steadfastly 
towards  the  cardinal,  said,  'He  who  in  such  state  from 
that  high  place  feedeth  his  eyes  with  my  torments,  within 
few  days  shall  be  hanged  out  at  the  same  window,  to  be 
seen  with  as  much  ignominy  as  he  now  leaueth  there  in 
pride ; ' "  how,  finally,  "  in  short  space  thereafter,  the  fire 
being  very  great,  he  was  consumed  to  powder."  We  can 
believe  that  the  man  who  wrote  this  affecting  narrative  — 
the  "ruffian  Knox,"  the  "  barbarian  who  made  Mary  weep" 
—  told  his  queen  the  very  truth  when  he  assured  her  that 
"he  delighted  not  in  the  weeping  of  any  of  God's  crea- 
tures; yea,  that  he  could  scarce  abide  the  tears  of  his 
own  boys  when  his  own  hands  corrected  them."  Love  and 
pity  were  assuredly  no  unwonted  emotions  in  the  large 
heart  of  him  who  "  never  feared  the  face  of  man." 

It  is  not  as  a  historian,  however,  that  the  literary  char- 
acter of  Knox  can  be  rated  highest.  His  history,  unlike 
Bacon's,  which  is  rather  overlabored  than  the  reverse, 
seems,  so  far  as  regards  composition,  to  have  been  carelessly 
written,  —  in  the  midst,  doubtless,  of  the  ceaseless  round 
of  harassing  employments  in  which  the  latter  portion  of 
his  life  was  spent.  It  is  in  his  shorter  compositions  that 
his  great  ability  as  a  writer  is  best  shown ;  and,  with  some 
of  these  before  us,  we  speak  advisedly  when  we  assert  that 


88  THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF   KNOX. 

he  was  decidedly  the  first  man  of  either  kingdom  who 
wrote  what  would  be  deemed  a  good  English  style,  tested 
by  the  present  standard.  There  is  a  mellifluous  flow  and, 
thorough  ease  in  his  sentences  altogether  astonishing,  when 
we  take  into  account  the  stiff  inflexibility  of  the  English 
language  at  that  period,  as  shown  in  the  iprose  writings  of 
even  his  abler  contemporaries.  Whole  colonies  of  half- 
naturalized  Greek  and  Latin  words  had  been  just  brought 
into  the  language ;  and,  as  if  unsuited  to  its  genius,  they 
performed  their  work  clumsily  and  heavily  in  even  the 
hands  of  superior  men.  We  instance  the  earlier  homilies 
of  the  English  Church.  Almost  every  member  of  every 
sentence  in  these  compositions  is  broken  into  two  parts,  the 
last  of  which  generally  repeats  in  Saxon  English  the  idea 
which  in  the  first  is  expressed  in  Latinized  English.  And 
hence  their  stiff  and  peculiar  verbosity  of  style.  In  the 
more  carefully  written  compositions  of  Knox  there  is  none 
of  this.  Johnson  has  remarked  of  Milton,  that  the  "  heat 
of  his  genius  sublimed  his  learning,"  and  threw  off  merely 
the  finer  and  more  subtle  parts  into  his  poetry.  In  the 
same  way,  the  genius  of  the  great  reformer  seems  to  have 
fused  into  one  pliant  and  homogeneous  mass  the  language 
which,  when  employed  by  men  of  a  lower  order,  was  so 
heterogeneous  and  untractable.  He  seemed  as  if  born  to 
anticipate  the  improvements  and  refinements  of  an  age  yet 
distant,  and  this  not  merely  in  his  knowledge  of  things, 
but  in  his  command  of  words.  Sir  Walter  Raleigh  has 
been  described  by  some  of  our  higher  critics  as  the  first 
good  prose  writer  of  England;  we  beg  to  submit  to  the 
reader  the  following  prayer,  written  by  Knox  during  the 
reign  of  Mary  of  Guise,  nearly  an  age,  be  it  remarked, 
before  Sir  Walter  produced  the  great  work  on  which  his 
fame  as  a  writer  chiefly  rests.  We  know  not  in  the  com- 
pass of  our  literature  a  more  interesting  composition.  It 
was  written  at  a  time  when  the  ashes  of  Walter  Mill  still 
blackened  the  public  square  of  St.  Andrews,  and  gives  us 
no  inadequate  idea  of  the  power  of  that  eloquence  chosen 


THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF  KNOX.  89 

by  Deity  as  his  honored  instrument  for  the  reformation  of 
a  kingdom.  We  adopt  the  punctuation  and  spelling  of  the 
oldest  edition  we  have  yet  seen,  —  that  of  the  year  1600. 

A  Complaint  of  the  Tyi^annie  used  against  the  Saincts  of  God,  con- 
taining a  Confession  of  our  Sinnes,  and  a  Prayer  for  the  Deliver- 
ance and  Preservation  of  the  Church,  and  Confusion  of  the 
Enemies. 

Eternall  and  everlasting  God,  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
who  hast  commanded  us  to  pray,  and  promised  to  hear  us,  even 
when  we  doe  call  from  the  pit  of  desperation,  the  miseries  of  these 
our  most  wicked  dayes  compel  us  to  poure  forth  before  thee  the 
complaintes  of  our  wretched  hearts,  oppressed  with  sorrow.  Our 
eyes  doe  behold,  and  our  eares  doe  heare,  the  calamities  and  oppres- 
sion which  no  tongue  can  expresse,  neither  yet,  alas,  doe  our  dull 
hearts  rightlie  consider  the  same ;  for  the  heathen  are  entred  into 
thine  inheritance,  they  have  polluted  thy  sanctuarie,  prophaned  and 
abolished  thy  blessed  institutions,  moste  cruellie  murthered,  and 
daylie  doe  murther  thy  deare  children ;  thou  hast  exalted  the  arm 
and  force  of  our  enemies,  thou  hast  exposed  us  a  prey  to  ignomlnie 
and  shame,  before  such  as  persecute  thy  trueth ;  their  waves  doe 
prosper,  they  glorie  in  mischiefe,  and  speaks  proudlie  against  the 
honour  of  thy  name  ^  thou  goest  not  forth  as  captaine  before  our 
hostes  ;  the  edge  of  our  sworde,  which  sometimes  was  most  sharpe, 
is  now  blunte,  and  doeth  returne  without  victorie  in  battel!. 

It  appeareth  to  our  enemies,  O  Lord,  that  thou  hast  broken  that 
league  which  of  thy  mercie  and  goodnesse  thou  hast  made  with  thy 
Church :  For  the  libertie  which  they  have  to  kill  thy  children  like 
sheep,  and  to  shed  their  blood,  no  man  resisting,  doeth  so  blind  and 
puffe  them  up  with  pride,  that  they  ashame  not  to  affirme,  that  thou 
regardest  not  our  intreating.  Thy  long  suffering  and  patience 
maketh  them  bold  from  crueltie  to  proceed  to  the  blasphemie  of  thy 
name.  And  in  the  mean  season,  alas,  we  do  not  consider  the 
heavenesse  of  our  sinnes,  which  long  have  deserved  at  thy  hands 
not  onlie  these  temporall  plagues,  but  also  the  torments  prepared  for 
the  inobedient ;  for  we  knowing  thy  blessed  will,  have  not  applyed 
our  diligence  to  obey  the  same,  but  have  followed,  for  the  most  part, 
the  vaine  conversation  of  the  blinde  world  :  and  therefore  in  verie 
justice  hast  thou  visited  our  unthankfulnesse.  But,  O  Lord,  if  thou 
shalt  observe    and    keep    in    mind  for  ever  the    iniquities  of    thy 

8* 


90  THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF   KNOX. 

children,  then  shall  no  flesh  abide  nor  be  saved  in  thy  presence.  And 
therefore  we,  convicted  in  our  own  conscience,  that  most  justlie  we 
suffer,  as  punished  by  thy  hand,  doe  nevertheless  call  for  mercie, 
according  to  promise :  And  first  we  desire  to  be  corrected  with  the 
rodde  of  thy  children,  by  the  which  we  may  be  brought  to  a  perfect 
hatred  of  sinne,  and  of  ourselves ;  and  therefore,  that  it  would  please 
thee,  for  Christ  Jesus  thy  Sonne's  sake,  to  shew  us,  and  to  thy  whole 
Church  universally  persecuted,  the  same  favour  and  grace  that  some- 
times thou  diddest,  when  the  chief  members  of  the  same  for  anguish 
and  fear  were  compelled  to  crie.  Why  have  the  nations  raged? 
Why  have  the  people  made  uproares  ?  And  why  have  princes  and 
kings  conjured  against  thine  anointed  Christ  Jesus  ?  Then  diddest 
thou  wonderfullie  assist  and  preserve  thy  small  and  dispersed  flock ; 
then  diddest  thou  burst  the  barres  and  gates  of  yron ;  then  diddest 
thou  shake  the  foundations  of  strong  prisons ;  then  diddest  thou 
plague  the  cruell  persecutors;  and  then  gavest  thou  tranquilitie  and 
rest,  after  those  raging  stormes  and  cruell  afflictions. 

O  Lord,  thou  remainest  one  for  ever;  we  have  offended,  and  are 
unworthie  of  anie  deliverance ;  but  worthie  art  thou  to  be  a  true 
and  constant  God,  and  worthie  is  thy  deare  Sonne,  Christ  Jesus, 
that  thou  shouldest  glorlfie  his  name,  and  revenge  the  blaspemie 
spoken  against  the  trueth  of  his  gospel,  which  is  by  our  adversaries 
damned  as  a  doctrine  deceaveable  and  false.  Yea,  the  blood  of  thy 
Sonne  is  trodden  under  feet,  in  that  the  blood  of  his  members  is  shed 
for  witnessing  of  thy  trueth ;  and  therefore,  O  Lord,  behold  not  the 
unworthinesse  of  us  that  call  for  the  redresse  of  these  enormities, 
neither  let  our  imperfections  stop  thy  mercies  from  us  ;  but  behold 
the  face  of  thine  anointed  Christ  Jesus,  and  let  the  equitie  of  our 
cause  prevaile  in  thy  presence  ;  let  the  blood  of  thy  saincts  which  is 
shed  be  openlie  revenged  in  the  eyes  of  thy  Church,  that  mortall 
men  may  know  the  vanitie  of  their  counsells,  and  that  thy  children 
may  have  a  taste  of  thine  eternal  goodness.  And  seeing  that  from 
that  man  of  sinne,  that  Romane  Antichrist,  the  chiefe  adversarie  to 
thy  deare  Sonne,  doth  all  iniquitie  spring,  and  mischiefe  proceede, 
let  it  please  thy  Fatherlie  mercie,  more  and  more  to  reveale  his 
deceit  and  tyrannic  to  the  world :  open  the  eyes  of  princes  and 
magistrates,  that  clearly  they  may  see  how  shamefullie  they  have 
bene  abused  by  his  deceaveable  wayes ;  how  by  him  they  are  com- 
pelled most  cruellie  to  shed  the  blood  of  thy  saincts,  and  by  violence 
refuse  thy  new  and  eternall  Testament ;  that  they  in  deep  consider- 
ation of  these  grivous  offences,  may  unfainedlie  lament  their  hor- 


THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER   OF   KNOX.  91 

rible  defection  from  Christ  Jesus  thy  Sonne ;  from  henceforth  study- 
ing to  promote  his  glorie  in  the  dominions  committed  to  their  charges, 
that  so  yet  once  again  the  glorie  of  thy  gospell  may  appeare  to  the 
world.  And  seeing  also  that  the  chief  strength  of  that  odious  beast 
consisteth  in  the  dissension  of  princes,  let  it  please  thee,  O  Father, 
which  hast  claimed  to  thyself  to  be  called  the  God  of  Peace,  to  unite 
and  knitte  in  perfect  love  the  hearts  of  all  those  that  look  for  the 
life  everlasting.  Let  no  craft  of  Sathan  move  them  to  warre  one 
against  another,  neither  yet  to  maintaine  by  their  force  and  strength 
that  kingdome  of  darknesse ;  but  rather  that  godlie  they  may  con- 
spire (illuminated  by  thy  Word),  to  root  out  from  among  them  all 
superstition  with  the  maintain ers  of  the  same. 

These,  thy  graces,  O  Lord,  we  unfainedlie  desire  to  be  poured 
forth  upon  all  realms  and  nations ;  but  principallie,  according  to  that 
duetie  which  thou  requirest  of  us,  we  most  earnestlie  desire  that  the 
heartes  of  the  inhabitants  of  England  and  Scotland^  whom  the 
malice  and  craft  of  Sathan,  and  of  his  supportes,  of  manie  yeers 
have  dissevered,  may  continue  in  that  godlie  unitie  which  now,  of 
late,  it  hath  pleased  thee  to  give  them,  being  knitted  together  in  the 
unitie  of  thy  Word :  Open  their  eyes  that  clearlie  they  may  behold 
the  bondage  and  miserie  which  is  purposed  against  them  both ;  and 
give  unto  them  wisdome  to  avoide  the  same,  in  such  sort  that,  in 
their  godlie  concorde,  thy  name  may  be  glorified,  and  thy  dispersed 
flock  comforted  and  relieved. 

The  commonwealthes,  O  Lord,  where  thy  gospell  is  trulie  preached, 
and  harbour  granted  to  the  afflicted  members  of  Christ's  bodie,  we 
commend  to  thy  protection  and  mercie ;  be  thou  unto  them  a  defence 
and  buckler.  Be  thou  a  watchman  to  their  walles,  and  a  perpetuall 
safeguard  to  their  cities,  that  the  crafty  assaults  of  their  enemies, 
repulsed  by  thy  power,  thy  gospell  may  have  free  passage  from  one 
nation  to  another ;  and  let  all  preachers  and  ministers  of  the  same 
have  the  gifts  of  thy  Holie  Spirit  in  such  aboundance  as  thy  godlie 
wisdome  shall  know  to  be  expedient  for  the  perfect  instruction  of 
that  flock  which  thou  hast  redeemed  with  the  precious  blood  of  thine 
onlie  and  well-beloved  Sonne  Jesus  Christ.  Purge  their  hearts  from 
all  kind  of  superstition,  from  ambition,  and  vaine  glorie,  by  which 
Sathan  continuallie  laboureth  to  stirre  up  ungodlie  contention,  and 
let  them  so  consent  in  the  unitie  of  thy  trueth,  that  neither  the 
estimation  which  they  have  of  men,  neither  the  vaine  opinions  which 
they  have  conceived  by  their  wintinges,  prevaile  in  them  against  the 
cleare  understanding  of  thy  blessed  Word. 


92  THE   LITERARY   CHARACTER    OF   KNOX. 

And  now,  last,  O  Lord,  we  moste  humblie  beseech  thee,  according 
to  that  prayer  of  thy  dear  Sonne  our  Lord  Jesus,  so  to  sanctifie  and 
confirme  us  in  thine  eternal  veritie,  that  neither  the  love  of  life 
temporal,  nor  yet  the  feare  of  torments  and  corporall  death,  cause 
us  to  denie  the  same  when  the  confession  of  our  faith  shall  be 
required  of  us ;  but  so  assist  us,  with  the  power  of  thy  Spirit,  that 
not  onlie  boldlie  we  may  confess  thee,  O  Father  of  mercies,  to  be 
the  true  God  alone,  and  whom  thou  hast  sent,  our  Lord  Jesus,  to  be 
the  only  Saviour  of  the  world,  but  also,  that  constantlie  we  may 
■withstand  all  doctrine  repugning  to  thy  eternall  trueth,  revealed  to 
us  in  thy  most  blessed  Word.  Remove  from  our  hearts  the  blind 
love  of  ourselves ;  and  so  rule  thou  all  the  actions  of  our  life,  that 
in  us  thy  godlie  name  may  be  glorified,  thy  Church  edified,  and 
Sathan  finally  confounded  by  the  power  and  means  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  to  whom,  with  thee  and  the  Holy  Spirit,  be  all  praise 
and  glory,  before  thy  congregation  now  and  ever. 

Arise,  O  Lord,  and  let  thine  enemies  be  ashamed,  let  them  flee 
from  thy  presence  that  hate  thy  godly  name ;  let  the  grones  of  thy 
prisoners  enter  in  before  thee,  and  preserve  by  thy  power  such  as 
be  appointed  to  death ;  let  not  thine  enemies  thus  triumph  to  the 
end,  but  let  them  understand,  that  against  thee  they  fight :  preserve 
and  defend  the  vine  which  thy  right  hand  hath  planted,  and  let  all 
nations  see  the  glory  of  thine  Anointed. 

Hasten,  Lord,  and  tarrie  not. 


DR.   THOMAS    M'CRIE. 


These  articles  upon  Dr.  Thomas  M'Crle  have  no  direct  bearing 
upon  the  Disruption  controversy.  They  illustrate,  however,  in  a 
way  eminently  clear  and  pertinent,  the  precise  manner  in  which  the 
principles  then  at  stake  were  apprehended  by  Mr.  Miller,  and  con- 
stitute a  masterly  sketch  of  the  beginnings  of  the  contest  in  connec- 
tion with  the  ecclesiastical  history  of  Scotland  in  the  present  cen- 
tury. For  these  reasons,  and  on  account  of  their  intrinsic  value  as 
embracing  a  powerful  and  vivid  delineation  of  one  of  the  greatest 
Presbyterian  divines,  it  has  been  deemed  proper  to  give  them  a  place 
in  the  volume.  —  Ed. 

ARTICLE    FIRST. 

It  is  now  sixteen  years  since  we  first  saw  the  late  Dr. 
M'Crie.  We  had  learned  to  love  and  respect  him  at  even 
an  earlier  period,  not  merely  as  an  honest  and  truly  able 
man,  but  also  as  a  genuine  type  and  representative  of  the 
Christian  patriots  of  Scotland,  —  those  worthies  of  other 
days,  whose  names  we  had  been  taught  to  pronounce  in 
our  childhood  as  at  once  the  wisest  and  warmest  friends  of 
the  people.  All  our  sympathies,  national,  Presbyterian,  and 
literary,  had  taken  part  together  in  our  admiration  of  the 
historian  of  Knox.  There  was  an  air  of  positive  romance 
about  his  history  as  a  man  of  letters,  which,  by  exciting 


94  DR.   THOMAS   M'CRIE. 

our  imagination,  endeared  him  to  us  the  more.  Waller 
has  remarked  of  the  poet  Denham,  "that  he  broke  out 
like  the  Irish  rebellion,  threescore  thousand  strong,  when 
nobody  was  aware  or  in  the  least  suspected  it."  But  with 
how  much  more  force  does  the  remark  apply  to  Dr.  M'Crie  ? 
Half  the  literary  power  of  the  country  had  been  employed 
for  more  than  a  hundred  years  in  blackening  tlie  memory 
of  our  noble-hearted  reformers.  Hume,  at  once  the  shrewd- 
est infidel  that  ever  opposed  the  truth  and  the  ablest  his- 
torian that  ever  perverted  it,  had  done  his  worst.  Gilbert 
Stuart,  no  mean  writer,  had  done  his  worst  too,  and  in 
even  a  bitterer  spirit.  Tytler,  Whitaker,  and  a  whole  host 
of  others,  including  some  of  our  most  popular  poets,  had 
followed  in  their  track;  and  the  pictures  of  the  more  wary 
but  not  less  insidious  Robertson  —  pictures  illustrative  of 
the  remark  of  Pope,  that  what  men  are  taught  to  pity  they 
soon  learn  to  love  —  had  prejudiced  the  public  mind  even 
more  pov/erfully  against  the  opponents  of  Mary  than  the 
attacks  of  more  open  assailants.  The  memory  of  Knox 
and  his  coadjutors  was  pilloried  in  the  literature  of  the 
country ;  every  witling,  as  he  passed  by,  flung  his  handful 
of  filth ;  and  that  portion  of  our  Presbyterian  people  who, 
looking  into  the  past  through  the  religious  medium,  and 
believing  that  our  reformers,  as  men  awakened  to  a  sense 
of  the  truth,  were  far  diflferent  from  what  our  literati  repre- 
sented them,  could  only  retain  for  themselves  the  juster 
estimate  of  their  fathers  regarding  them,  without  influenc- 
ing in  the  least  the  opinions  of  their  contemporaries.  Such 
w^as  the  state  of  things  when  a  nameless  champion  entered 
the  lists,  and  threw  down  his  gauntlet  in  the  cause  of 
Knox  and  the  reformers.  Who  or  what  was  he  ?  A  per- 
son who  had  been  engaged  a  few  years  before  in  some 
obscure  squabble,  which  he  had  seemed  to  think  of  vast 
importance,  forsooth,  but  which  had  interested  no  one  but 
himself  and  the  opponents,  who,  with  the  aid  of  the  Court 
of  Session,  had  2:>ut  him  doion,  and  which  really  no  one  had 
thought  worth  while  trying  to  understand.    Well,  but  what 


DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE.  95 

was  the  result  on  this  occasion  ?  The  literature  of  a  whole 
century  went  down  before  him,  —  Hume,  Stuart,  Tytler, 
Whitaker,  Robertson,  and  the  poets,  —  all  the  great  names 
among  the  dead;  and  the  living  —  men  of  a  lower  stature 
—  he  foiled  with  scarce  half  an  effort.  All  went  down  who 
opposed  him,  and  the  rest  stood  warily  aloof.  The  far 
known  "  Chaldee  Manuscript,"  so  much  more  witty  than 
reverent,  is  happy  in  its  description  of  this  redoubtable 
champion  ;  for,  with  all  its  mixture  of  the  grotesque,  it  has 
at  once  the  merit  of  being  poetical  and  true.  "And  the 
Griffin,"  says  the  Manuscript,  "came  with  a  roll  of  the 
names  of  those  whose  blood  had  been  shed,  between  his 
teeth ;  and  I  saw  him  standing  over  the  body  of  one  that 
had  been  buried  long  in  the  grave,  defending  it  from  all 
men ;  and,  behold,  there  were  none  which  durst  come  near 
him." 

We  had  just  passed  our  first  week  in  this  part  of  the 
country,  a  little  out  of  town,  early  in  1824,  and  had  walked 
into  Edinburgh  on  the  Sabbath  morning  to  see  the  Doctor 
and  hear  him  preach.  Only  two  evenings  before,  we  had 
been  sauntering,  after  the  labors  of  the  day,  along  one  of 
the  green  lanes  of  Liberton,  and  had  met  Avith  a  gentle- 
man whose  appearance  had  struck  us  as  being  as  much  the 
reverse  of  commonplace  as  any  we  had  ever  seen.  He  was 
an  erect,  spare,  tall  man  —  rather  above,  we  should  have 
supposed,  than  under  six  feet,  though  perhaps  his  carriage, 
which  had  much  quiet  dignity  in  it,  and  a  good  deal  of  the 
military  air,  might  have  led  to  an  over-estimate.  The 
countenance  was  pale,  we  would  have  said  almost  sallow, 
and  the  cast  of  expression  somewhat  melancholy ;  but 
there  was  a  wakeful  jDenetration  in  the  dark  eyes,  r.nd  an 
air  of  sedate  power  and  reflection  so  legibly  stamped  on 
every  feature,  that  we  were  irresistibly  impressed  A\ith  the 
idea  he  could  be  no  ordinary  man.  We  stood  looking 
after  him.  He  wore  a  brown  great-coat  over  a  suit  of 
black,  the  neck  a  good  deal  whitened  by  powder;  and  the 
rim  of  the  hat  behind,  w^hich  was  slightly  turned  up,  bore 


a  similar  stain.  Who  can  that  possibly  be  ?  we  thought. 
Shall  we  impart  to  the  reader  the  recollection  which  flashed 
into  our  mind,  —  from  an  association  awakened,  doubtless, 
by  what  we  deemed  the  half-military,  half-clerical  air  of 
the  stranger  ?  —  it  was  that  of  Sir  Richard  Steele's  story  of 
the  devout  old  military  chaplain,  who,  on  being  insulted 
by  a  foul-mouthed,  blasphemous  young  officer,  challenged 
him,  fought  and  disarmed  him,  and  then,  ere  he  took  him 
to  mercy,  made  him  kneel  down  and  ask  pardon,  not  of 
him,  but  of  the  Being  whom  he  had  blasphemed.  On  the 
Sunday  morning  we  contrived  to  find  our  way  to  the 
Doctor's  chapel  about  half  an  hour  ere  divine  service 
began,  and  planted  ourselves  in  one  of  the  empty  pews 
(for  the  congregation  had  not  yet  assembled)  in  front  of 
the  pulpit.  The  people  began  to  gather  ;  —  we  thought, 
but  it  might  not  be  so,  that  more  than  the  usual  propor- 
tion were  elderly  ;  a  respectable  looking,  well-dressed  man, 
accompanied  by  his  wife  and  family,  entered  the  pew 
which  we  had  so  unceremoniously  appropriated,  and  we 
rose  to  leave  it  for  the  passage,  a  good  deal  abashed  at 
feeling,  for  the  first  time,  that  we  were  an  intruder,  for  we 
had  thought  previously  of  only  the  Doctor.  The  man, 
however,  politely  insisted  that  we  should  keep  our  seat.  On 
sitting  down  again,  we  found  that  the  Doctor  had  mean- 
while entered  the  pulpit,  and  we  at  once  recognized  in  the 
historian  of  Knox  and  Melville  the  military  chaplain  whom 
we  had  met  in  the  green  lane. 

We  were  first  struck  by  the  great  simplicity  of  his  man- 
ner. It  reminded  us  of  a  remark  of  Robertson's,  on  his 
return  from  his  visit  to  London,  immediately  after  the 
publication  of  his  History  of  Scotland.  The  extraordinary 
merit  of  the  work  had  introduced  him  to  all  the  more 
eminent  literati  of  the  time  ;  and  he  was  asked,  on  coming 
back,  by  a  friend  in  Edinburgh,  whether  he  tliought  the 
celebrated  men,  his  new  acquaintances,  varied  as  they  were 
in  genius  and  acquirement,  had  any  one  trait  in  common. 
"Yes,"  replied  the  historian,  "one  trait  at  least,  and  a  very 


97 

striking  one ;  all  the  truly  great  among  them  are  marked 
by  a  child-like  simplicity  of  manner."  The  service  went 
on.  There  was  a  solemn  impressiveness  about  the  Doc- 
tor's prayers,  which  were,  in  the  best  sense  of  the  term 
extempore,  that  was  well  suited  to  lead  our  thoughts  from 
himself  to  the  Being  whom  he  addressed.  There  was  little 
exertion  of  voice,  and  no  striking  combinations  of  set 
phrases,  fine,  doubtless,  when  they  are  new,  but  on  which 
it  is  possible  to  ring  the  changes  until  they  become  com- 
monplace and  lose  their  meaning  ;  but  there  was  what  was 
much  better,  —  a  continuous  stream  of  thought,  sobered  by 
a  feeling  of  devout  reverence,  which  found  ready  entrance 
into  the  mind,  and  subdued  it  into  seriousness.  He  en- 
tered upon  his  discourse.  We  were  again  struck  by  the 
great  simj^licity  of  his  manner  and  style,  and  listened, 
rather  soothed  and  pleased  by  his  lucid  statements  of 
important  truths,  grounded,  if  we  may  so  express  our- 
selves, on  a  deep  substratum  of  serious  feeling,  than  sur- 
prised by  any  marked  originality  of  view.  By  and  by, 
however,  when  the  first  obvious  principles  were  laid 
down,  the  Doctor  began  to  draw  inferences.  Ah!  thought 
we,  as  we  sat  up  erect  in  the  pew,  there  now  is  something 
we  never  heard  before.  The  discourse,  simple  and  quiet 
at  its  commencement,  had  assumed  a  new  character.  The 
unquestioned  but  common  truths  were  but  the  foundations 
of  the  edifice;  the  edifice  itself  was  such  a  one  as  the 
historian  of  Knox  and  Melville  could  alone  have  erected. 
There  were  remarks  on  human  nature,  that,  from  their 
graphic  shrewdness,  reminded  us  of  Crabbe,  and  yet  the 
mode  was  entirely  different ;  there  were  gleams  of  fancy, 
that,  falling  for  a  moment  on  some  of  the  remoter  recesses 
of  the  subject,  lighted  them  up  into  sudden  brightness, 
and,  when  fully  shown,  the  gleam  disappeared ;  there  were 
strokes  of  eloquence,  condensed  at  times  into  a  single 
sentence,  that  found  their  way  direct  to  the  heart;  and 
far  conclusions  attained  by  a  few  steps  through  vistas  of 
thought  unopened  before.     We  would  perhaps  not  have 

9 


98  •  DR.  THOMAS   M'cRIE. 

termed  the  discourse  a  philosophic  one  at  the  time  we 
were  listening  to  it :  men  are  misled  by  the  mere  conven- 
tionalities of  thought  —  the  set  terms  and  phrases  in 
which  thought  is  usually  embodied ;  and  according  to  the 
pattern  of  these  are  they  apt  to  judge  and  classify  the 
thoughts  themselves.  But  the  reverse  process  is  surely 
the  true  one:  it  is  the  man,  not  the  dress,  to  which  we  are 
to  look,  —  the  soul,  not  the  body;  and,  tried  by  this  pro- 
cess, the  Doctor's  discourse  w^as  philosophic  in  the  best 
and  highest  sense  of  the  terra ;  for  what  is  philosophy  but 
good  sense,  on  an  extended  scale,  employed  in  discovering 
the  remote  causes  of  things,  or  in  anticipating  their  distant 
effects?  His  plain,  simple  style  reminded  us  of  Swift's 
definition — "Proper  words  in  their  proper  places."  There 
w:is  nothing  very  striking  in  the  general  groundwork,  only 
it  would  be  found  no  easy  matter  to  alter  any  one  of  his 
words  for  a  better.  Even  his  occasional  Scotticisms  had 
invariably  more  point  and  a  larger  meaning  than  the  nearly 
synonymous  English  phrases  which  a  fastidious  critic  might 
have  substituted  for  them.  But  style,  and  even  thought, 
were  but  subordinate  matters  in  the  pulpit  ministrations 
of  Dr.  M'Crie.  Never  have  we  listened  to  a  preacher  — 
and  from  that  day  until  we  quitted  the  district  he  was 
almost  our  only  minister —  on  whose  judgment  and  integ- 
rity we  could  more  thoroughly  depend.  Scotchmen,  espe- 
cially the  Presbyterian  Scotch,  are  naturally  sticklers  for 
the  right  of  private  judgment,  and  less  disposed  than 
almost  any  other  people  to  yield  themselves  up  implicitly 
to  their  religious  teachers ;  and  hence  it  is  that,  though 
Moderatism  has  been  encamped  in  the  Church  for  more 
than  a  century,  it  has  acquired  no  popular  basis.  To  the 
Doctor,  however,  we  soon  learned  to  give  ourselves  up 
entirely.  Not  that  he  saved  us  the  trouble  of  thought ;  — 
his  discourses  were  by  much  too  intellectual  for  that,  and 
his  remarks  had  a  germinative  quality,  suited  to  fill  the 
mind  which  received  them  in  their  unbroken  vitality :  but 
if  he  did  not  save  us  the  trouble  of  thought,  he  at  least 


DR.  THOMAS    M'cRIE.  99 

saved  us  the  trouble  of  suspicion.  We  could  lean  our- 
selves unsuspectingly  on  his  judgment;  nature  had  formed 
him  for  a  leader;  and  his  capacious  understanding  and 
almost  instinctive  sagacity  were  heightened  and  strength- 
ened by  other  and  even  more  valuable  qualities — the  depth 
of  his  devotional  feelings,  and  the  high-toned  rectitude  of 
the  moral  sense. 

The  Sunday  on  which  we  first  heard  Dr.  M'Crie  was,  ar, 
we  have  said,  early  in  the  season.  There  had  been  a  sud- 
den change  of  weather  a  few  days  before,  and  there  was  a 
great  deal  of  coughing  in  the  chapel.  We  were  annoyed 
by  finding  some  of  the  pithiest  remarks  in  the  discourse 
broken  in  upon  by  some  remorseless  cougher,  and  mu- 
tilated, so  far  at  least  as  the  listeners  were  concerned ;  and 
the  Doctor  seemed  somewhat  annoyed  too.  He  knew 
better,  however,  than  we  did,  in  what  degree  even  cough- 
ing lies  under  the  restraint  of  the  will;  he  knew,  too, 
what  we  did  not,  that  when  people  are  very  much  sur- 
prised they  cease  to  cough.  Suddenly  the  Doctor  stopped 
short  in  the  middle  of  his  argument ;  every  face  in  the 
chapel  was  turned  to  the  pulpit,  and  for  a  full  minute  so 
dead  was  the  stillness  that  a  pin  might  be  heard  to  drop. 
"I  see,  my  friends,"  he  said,  with  a  suppressed  smile,  "you 
can  all  be  quiet  enough  when  I  am  quiet."  It  would  be 
diflScult  to  imagine  a  better  humored  rebuke,  but  certainly 
never  was  there  a  more  effectual  one.  A  suppressed  cough 
might  occasionally  be  heard  during  the  rest  of  the  service, 
but  not  even  the  tithe  of  what  had  disturbed  it  before. 
Simple  as  the  incident  may  seem,  we  remember  being 
much  struck  by  it,  as  illustrative  of  the  peculiar  shrewd- 
ness of  the  character. 

We  have  but  just  risen  from  the  perusal  of  the  Life  of 
Dr.  M'Crie  by  his  son,  the  bulkiest  volume  we  ever  ran  over 
at  a  sitting,  and  certainly  one  of  the  most  interesting  we 
have  ever  read.  We  had  thought  that  the  subject  of  the 
memoir  could  not  have  risen  in  our  esteem,  and,  now  that 
we  have  communicated  our  sentiments  and  recollections 


100 

of  him  to  the  reader,  others  might  perhaps  have  thought 
so  too ;  but  we  have  been  mistaken ;  our  respect  for  his 
memory  is  higher  now  tlian  it  ever  was  before.    The  v/hole 
character  lies  open  before   us,  —  magnanimous,  wise,  sin- 
cere, humble,  affectionate,  invincibly  honest,  consistently 
devout ;  and  the  more  thoroughly  we  study  it,  the  more 
do  we  find  to  love  and  admire.    It  forms  a  mirror  by  which 
to  dress  the  heart ;  it  furnishes  a  rule  by  which  to  regulate 
the  understanding.      We  contemplate   with   a  feeling  of 
awe  the  far-sighted  character  of  his  intellect,  —  to  use  the 
language  of  Cowper,  "the  terrible  sagacity  that  informed 
his  heart,"  in  anticipating  coming  events.     "We  have  al- 
luded to  his  first  controversy.     It  commenced  just  thirty- 
seven  years  ago,  and  involved  him  in  great  difliculty  and 
distress;  many  of  his  friends  and  his  people  forsook  him; 
he  was  dispossessed  of  his  chapel  by  the  strong  arm  of  the 
law;  he  was  deposed  and  excommunicated hy  his  brethren. 
Yes,  the  greatest  and  ablest,  and  certainly  one  of  the  best 
and  most  devout  Dissenters  Scotland  ever  produced,  was 
deposed    and    excommunicated:    for    what?  —  simply   for 
contumacy  and  disobedience  to  the  synod  of  which  he  was 
a  member.    But  disobedience  in  what  ?    That  could  not  be 
understood  :  it  involved  some  metaphysical  point  about  the 
civil  magistrate,  and  the  duty  of  nations  as  such  in  their 
religious  character.     Lawyers  and  judges  could  see  noth- 
ing in  it;  and  they  decided  the  case  merely  as  one  of  con- 
tumacy.    The  press  and  the  pulpit  were  alike  silent.     The 
matter  was  one  of  no  interest   or  importance   whatever, 
except  to  the  sufferer  for  conscience'  sake ;   and  he  pub- 
lished a  "Statement"  on  the  subject,  which  no  one  read, 
and   asserted  that  the  principles  Avhich  he  opposed  were 
soon  to  slmke  the  whole  country,  and  subvert  all  its  reli- 
gious institutions.    "  But  we  will  not  live  to  see  that  day," 
said  one  of  his  humbler  friends.     "  I  don't  know  that," 
was  the  reply ;  "  I  feel  persuaded  you  will  see  the  fruits  of 
these  principles  in  a  quarter  of  a  centuryP     Men  know 
something  better  about  them  now.     It  was  the  great  Vol- 


DR.  THOMAS   M'cRIE.  101 

nntary  contest  which  this  remarkable  man  saw  so  clearly 
jit  this  early  period;  and  his  *' Statement"  has  since  been 
eagerly  sought  after  and  reprinted,  as  the  ablest  defence 
of  religious  establishments  which  has  yet  appeared.  To 
employ  his  own  striking  figure,  he  had  seen  "in  the  cloud 
like  the  man's  hand,  the  tempest  which  was  soon  to  darken 
the  heavens,  the  earth,  and  the  sea,"  Contrast  with  this 
wonderful  power  the  benevolence  and  humility  of  the 
character.  "People  of  less  reach  of  mind,"  says  one  of  his 
friends,  "never  can  appreciate  aright  the  disinterested 
patience  with  which  he  would  hear  out  a  long  story  from 
some  prosy  person,  or  walk  far  to  see  some  poor  body,  or 
even,  as  I  have  known  him  do,  go  six  miles  out  of  town, 
that  he  might  communicate  hy  word  of  mouth,  and  with 
the  greatest  delicacy,  some,  painful  news  to  a  servant 
maid," 

ARTICLE    SECOND, 

Thomas  IVrCrie  was  born  in  the  year  1772,  at  Dunsc,  in 
Berwickshire,  a  town  which  has  been  the  birthplace  of 
at  least  two  other  distinguished  men,  —  Duns  Scotus,  the 
famous  scholastic  doctor  of  the  fourteenth  century,  and 
Thomas  Boston,  the  well-known  author  of  the  "  Fourfold 
State."  His  parents,  persons  of  great  worth,  belonged  to 
that  middle  class  among  the  people  wdiich  may  be  regarded 
as  forming  the  staple  of  our  population,  and  on  whose 
general  character  that  of  the  country  always  depends.  His 
iiither,  whose  name  was  also  Thomas,  a  strictly  religious 
man,  of  strong  good  sense  and  much  general  intelligence, 
was  a  manufacturer  and  merchant.  His  mother,  Mary 
Hood,  a  tender-hearted  and  affectionate  woman,  of  singu- 
lar piety  and  devotedness,  was  the  daughter  of  a  re- 
spectable farmer.  Thomas,  their  first-born,  seemed  to 
share  in  the  character  of  both.  He  was  a  manly  little 
fellow,  rational  beyond  his  years,  fond  of  robust  exercises, 
skilled  in  athletic  games,  and  a  fearless  rider ;  but  there 

9* 


102  DR.  THOMAS   M  CRIE. 

were  other  and  gentler  elements  in  his  nature,  —  a  tender- 
ness and  sensibility  of  heart  almost  feminine,  and  a  warmth 
and  strength  of  affection  not  often  equalled.  Never,  in 
any  instance,  were  mother  and  son  more  thoroughly  at- 
tached. She  was  long  in  delicate  health  ;  and  the  hours 
wasted  by  his  companions  in  play  were  spent  by  Thomas 
in  watching  beside  his  mother's  sick-bed,  and  in  perform- 
ing for  her  all  the  little  acts  of  kindness  which  her  situa- 
tion required.  And  well  was  his  tenderness  repaid;  in 
after-life  he  has  frequently  been  heard  to  trace  to  her 
example,  her  instructions,  and  her  prayers,  his  first  serious 
impressions  of  religion. 

"Common  birds  fly  in  crowds,"  says  the  romantic  Sir 
Philip  Sydney,  "  but  the  eagle  goes  forth  alone."  It  was 
soon  found  that  the  little  boy,  the  manufacturer's  son,  dif- 
fered from  all  his  fellows.  He  had  an  insatiable  appetite 
for  knowledge,  that,  the  more  it  was  fed,  strengthened  the 
more.  He  was  sedate,  too,  and  studious ;  and  often,  when 
he  wandered  out  alone  into  the  fields  to  pore  over  his  books, 
food  and  play  and  his  companions  were  all  alike  forgotten, 
and  the  live-long  day  passed  happily  in  the  solitude.  His 
father  rather  discouraged  the  prosecution  of  his  studies; 
"he  would  not,"  he  said,  "make  one  of  his  sons  a  gentle- 
man at  the  expense  of  the  rest;"  but  the  hopes  of  the 
aftectionate  mother  had  been  awakened  in  the  behalf  of 
her  favorite  son ;  and,  through  the  kind  interference  of  the 
boy's  maternal  grandfather,  he  was  permitted  to  pursue 
what  he  so  ardently  inclined.  Had  the  decision  been 
otherwise,  the  world  would  probably  have  heard  of  him, 
not  as  the  deeply-learned  historian  of  Knox  and  Melville, 
but  as  a  self-taught  writer  of  powerful  genius;  for  unques- 
tionably the  development  of  the  larger  minds  is  but  little 
dependent  on  circumstances,  and  the  mind  of  M'Crie 
belonged  to  the  larger  order.  And  yet  we  have  little 
doubt,  when  we  consider  how  much  the  Avorld  has  owed 
to  his  unequalled  powers  of  research,  that  his  usefulness, 
if  not  his  celebrity,  depended  materially  on  the  decision. 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  103 

In  his  sixteenth  year  he  set  out  for  the  first  time  to  attend 
the  classes  at  the  University  of  Edinburgh,  and  his  pious 
and  attached  mother,  whom  he  lost  in  about  a  twelve- 
month after,  but  whom  he  never  forgot,  accompanied  him 
part  of  the  way,  and  parted  from  him  on  Coldingham 
Moor.  Before  bidding  him  farewell,  she  led  him  behind  a 
rock,  a  little  way  off  the  road,  and  there,  kneeling  down 
with  him,  she  affectionately  and  solemnly  devoted  him  to 
the  service  of  God,  and  earnestly  commended  him  to  his 
fitherly  care.  The  grave  closed  over  her;  nearly  half  a 
century  passed  by;  the  time  had  well-nigh  arrived  when 
the  son  whom  she  had  blessed,  and  for  whom  she  had 
prayed,  was  to  rest  from  his  labors;  and  then  she  appeared 
to  him  in  a  dream,  as  he  had  seen  her  behind  the  rock 
upon  the  moor,  and  beckoned  upon  him  to  follow  her, 
which  he  promised  to  do.  Dr.  M'Crie  was  no  weak  or 
superstitious  man,  but  he  did  not  on  this  occasion  slight 
the  solemn  warning,  and  the  result  showed  that  he  only 
regarded  it  in  the  proper  light. 

He  passed  through  college  with  little  show,  but  with 
great  j^rofit :  knowledge  was  his  daily  food,  and  he  could 
not  exist  without  it.  The  languages,  moral  and  political 
science,  history,  philology,  eloquence,  and  in  some  degree 
poetry,  were  his  favorite  studies.  His  every-day  compan- 
ions among  the  classics  were  Tacitus,  Livy,  and  Cicero; 
and  he  sedulously  kept  up  his  Latin  reading  to  the  close  of 
his  life.  He  excelled,  too,  in  his  knowledge  of  Greek.  The 
English  authors  he  most  valued  were  the  masculine  think- 
ers of  our  literature ;  the  Lockes,  Smiths,  Butlers,  Reids, 
and  Humes.  He  was  a  thorough  admirer  of  the  character 
and  the  writings  of  one  who,  at  an  after  period,  expressed 
an  equally  high  admiration  of  him  and  of  his  productions, 

his  professor,  Dugald  Stewart.     We  need  hardly  add, 

that  he  was  not  content  with  being  merely  a  reader  of 
books ;  he  cultivated  a  close  acquaintance  with  his  humbler 
countrymen  ;  and  the  future  historian  might  often  be  found 
in  some  back  shop,  ensconced  among  the  members  of  a 


104  DR.  THOMAS  m'cRIE. 

reading  club,  listening  to  the  news  of  the  day,  and  the 
accompanying  remarks.  He  had  thrown  himself  at  an 
early  period  on  his  own  resources :  he  had  taught  succes- 
sively two  country  schools  in  the  neighborhood  of  Dunsc 
before  completing  his  fifteenth  year,  and  had  contrived  — 
a  task  of  some  difficulty,  one  should  think  — both  to  con- 
trol his  pupils  when  under  his  charge  in  school,  and  to  play 
with  them  when  they  got  out.  In  his  eighteenth  year  he 
removed  to  Brechin,  where  he  continued  to  teach  a  school 
for  three  years  longer,  and  of  which  he  may  be  regarded 
as  the  founder;  for  he  began  with  only  three  pupils,  and 
ere  he  quitted  it  he  had  well-nigh  filled  the  house.  It  still 
continues  to  exist.  His  character  at  this  early  period  of 
his  life,  including  the  space  between  his  eighteenth  and 
his  twenty-first  year,  is  well  described  by  one  of  his  old 
pupils,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Gray  of  Brechin,  as  a  happy  mixture 
of  playfulness  and  sobriety.  Exemplary  in  conduct,  a  fre- 
quenter of  fellowship  meetings,  attached  to  the  company 
and  converse  of  unlettered  Christians,  strict  in  his  observ- 
ance of  the  Sabbath,  and  much  in  religious  duty,  a  great 
consumer,  withal,  of  the  midnight  oil,  —  he  was  yet  one 
of  the  most  playful,  ready-witted,  buoyant-spirited,  happy 
young  men  in  the  country  side.  No  one  could  be  readier 
for  an  adventure,  or  fonder  of  innocent  amusement;  and 
in  exercises  of  skill  or  peril  he  distanced  competition. 
It  could  not  be  anticipated  at  this  stage  of  his  life  that  he 
was  to  write  the  Lives  of  Knox  and  Melville;  "but  those 
who  best  knew  him,"  says  Mr.  Gray,  "  had  already  set  him 
down  as  a  very  likely  person,  did  the  occasion  offer,  for 
accomplishing  some  of  their  boldest  deeds."  We  were 
not  mistaken,  it  seems,  in  our  first  impression  of  the  Doc- 
tor, or  in  recognizing  in  his  quiet  and  yet  dignified  air  a 
mixture  of  the  clerical  and  the  military.  He  was  as  fitted 
by  nature  to  lead  a  battalion  to  the  charge,  as  qualified  by 
grace  to  direct  the  devotions  of  a  congregation. 

The  native  Aveight  of  his  character  began  to  be  felt.     He 
was  licensed  to  be  a  preacher  of  the  gospel  by  the  Asso- 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  105 

ciate  Synod  of  Kelso,  in  1795,  and  received,  only  a  month 
after,  a  unanimous  call  to  become  minister  of  an  Associate 
congregation  in  Edinburgh,  which  anticipated  and  frus- 
trated tlie  call  of  another  resi3ectable  congr-egation  of  the 
same  body  who  were  likewise  sohcitous  to  secure  him  as 
their  pastor.  The  people  do  sometimes  discern  merit,  and 
make  amends  for  their  rejection  of  Youngs  and  Edwardses^ 
by  their  anxiety  to  secure  the  services  of  M'Cries.  It  is 
an  interesting  fact,  that  he  had  a  strong  j^resentiment,  long 
ere  his  appointment,  of  being  settled  as  a  minister  in  Ed- 
inburgh, —  the  only  field,  be  it  remembered,  in  which  his 
truly  important  historical  labors  could  be  profitably  pur- 
sued. Shortly  after  his  settlement  he  was  united  in  mar- 
riage to  a  lady  to  whom  he  had  been  long  and  ardently 
attached  —  a  person  of  great  sweetness  of  disposition,  ex- 
emplary prudence  and  afiection,  and  with  whom  he  enjoyed 
much  happiness.  He  was  assiduous  in  his  ministerial  labors ; 
our  readers  already  know  the  character  of  his  pulpit  min- 
istrations. His  week-day  services  were  not  less  valuable ; 
and  there  was  a  frankness  and  kindness  of  disposition 
about  him  that  recommended  him  powerfully  to  the  affec- 
tions of  his  people.  The  Doctor  was  one  of  those  rare 
individuals  who  always  think  of  the  interests  of  others  in 
the  first  place,  and  of  their  own  last.  His  congregation 
rapidly  increased ;  but  it  was  composed  mostly  of  the 
humbler  classes  of  society ;  and  his  income,  which  had  not 
been  growing  in  proportion,  was  inadequate  to  support  his 
station  in  a  large  city,  and  provide  for  the  wants  of  an 
increasing  family.  Years  of  scarcity,  and  the  revolution- 
ary war,  bore  heavily  upon  all  classes ;  and  the  price  of 
provisions  about  the  year  1799  rose  to  a  height  unequalled 
at  any  previous  period.  His  people  felt  that  duty  de- 
manded an  effort,  and  they  met  among  themselves  to  pro- 
pose an  addition  to  his  stipend.     No  sooner,  however,  had 


1  Mr.  Young  and  Mr.  Edwards  were  the  rejected  presentees  to  Auchterarder 
and  Strathbogie. 


106  DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE. 

the  intention  reached  their  minister's  ears  than  he  clapped 
his  veto  upon  it  at  once.  The  times,  to  be  sure,  might 
bear  somewhat  hardly  upon  him,  but  then  they  could  not 
bear  less  hardly  upon  his  people.  The  expense  of  living, 
he  remarked,  in  a  letter  which  he  addressed  to  them  on  the 
subject,  and  which  they  gratefully  inscribed  among  the 
congregational  minutes,  had,  indeed,  been  increasing  for 
some  time  past,  but  the  income  of  tradespeople  had  not 
increased  in  proportion ;  and  as  the  greater  part  of  the 
-body  were  of  that  description,  he  could  not  permit  the 
sacrifice  which  their  feelings  had  so  kindly  suggested. 
Worse  times  soon  followed;  and  in  the  long-remembered 
year  1800,  when  our  fields,  according  to  Wordsworth, 
"were  left  with  half  a  harvest,"  and  a  general  scarcity  of 
employment  immensely  heightened  the  evil,  he  came  un- 
hesitatingly forward,  and  proposed  in  form  to  give  up  a 
portion  of  his  already  too  scanty  income.  His  people, 
however,  were  not  to  be  thus  overcome  by  their  disinter- 
ested and  generous  pastor,  and  the  proposal,  therefore,  was 
gratefully  but  firmly  declined.  It  would  be  no  difficult 
matter  to  find  striking  foils  to  these  instances  of  high- 
toned  and  unselfish  feeling  among  some  of  the  most  noisy 
advocates  of  Voluntaryism. 

He  was  now  on  the  eve  of  entering  his  first  great  con- 
troversy. At  the  period  of  his  license  the  synod  were 
contemplating  certain  changes  in  the  jDrofession  of  their 
body,  afliecting,  among  other  things,  the  old  received  opin- 
ion regarding  the  power  of  the  civil  magistrate  in  reli- 
gious matters.  Young,  fearless,  and  ardent,  the  frank  and 
open-hearted  probationer  had  adopted  all  the  more  liberal 
opinions  of  the  age.  He  had  been  smit  with  the  opening 
glories  of  the  French  Revolution,  so  soon  to  be  quenched 
in  blood ;  his  views  of  ecclesiastical  polity  had  been 
taken  through  a  somewhat  similar  medium,  and  the  con- 
templated changes  accorded  well  with  his  hastily-formed 
conclusions.  He  objected,  therefore,  against  taking  the 
formula  as  it  then  stood,  without  some  qualification  cor- 


DR.  THOMAS    M'cRIE.  107 

responding  with  the  anticipated  change  ;  and  the  objection 
was  n'lore  than  sustained  —  it  was  highly  approved  of,  and 
made  the  groundwork  of  a  general  declaration.  Bitterly 
did  he  afterwards  regret  this  rash  step,  and  the  result  to 
which  it  had  led.  His  mind  was  not  one  of  the  super- 
ficial and  ordinary  class,  that  are  content  to  flutter  over 
the  surfices  of  things.  He  deeply  revolved  the  subject; 
applied  the  principle  which  it  embodied  to  the  events  of 
the  past;  followed  it,  with  that  far-seeing  sagacity  in 
which  he  excelled  all  his  contemporaries,  into  its  remote 
consequences;  and,  convinced  that  he  had  erred  egre- 
giously,  he  joined  with  five  of  his  brethren,  all  men  of  the 
highest  character,  in  remonstrating  with  the  synod  against 
the  proposed  change  of  the  formula.  He  felt  the  mortify- 
ing awkwardness  of  his  position  ;  but  principle  demanded, 
not  that  he  should  appear  consistent,  but  that  he  should 
do  what  he  had  ascertained  to  be  right ;  and  feeling,  there- 
fore, was  sacrificed  to  duty.  The  great  bulk  o'f  his  brethren 
deemed  the  matter  one  of  little  consequence.  He  had 
come  to  know  better:  that  principle  could  not  be  one  of 
slight  importance  which,  if  it  had  been  generally  operative 
in  the  past,  would  have  effectually  prevented  the  Protes- 
tant Reformation,  and  which,  if  carried  out  to  its  legitimate 
effects,  would  shake  the  whole  country,  and  overturn  all 
its  religious  institutions.  And  such  was  the  gloemy  result 
which  he  at  this  period  ominously  anticipated.  He  peti- 
tioned the  synod,  and,  referring  to  his  former  ill-weighed 
scruples,  expressed  his  deep  regret  for  the  rash  step  to 
which  they  had  led,  and  the  great  distress  in  which  he  had 
been  plunged  by  the  reflection  that  he  might  have  been 
thus  instrumental  in  unhinging  the  principles  of  others. 
There  is  no  portion  of  his  biography  in  which  we  find  the 
moral  sense  more  nobly  predominant  than  during  this 
period  of  distress.  The  intensity  of  his  feelings  visibly 
afiected  his  health.  "  What  would  I  give,"  he  says,  in  a 
letter  to  one  of  his  friends  at  this  period,  "  to  have  some 
of  my  years  blotted  out !     I  think  my  situation  worse  than 


108  DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE. 

that  of  the  other  brethren,  and  need  to  be  taught  the 
lesson  of  the  apostle,  'There  hath  no  temptation  taken 
you  but  such  as  is  common  to  men/"  His  history  at  this 
period,  with  that  of  the  few  friends  who  made  common 
cause  with  him,  closely  resembles  the  history  of  the  first 
founders  of  the  Secession.  They  alike  stood  upon  the  old 
ground,  a  small  and  despised  minority,  accused  of  sectarian 
narrowness  and  a  want  of  charity,  protesting  and  remon- 
strating against  what  they  deemed  dangerous  and  uncon- 
stitutional innovations,  but  protesting  and  remonstrating 
in  vain.  Matters  soon  reached  their  crisis.  The  synod 
enacted  their  new  Narrative  and  Testimony  into  a  terra 
of  communion.  The  protesters  stood  firm ;  and  though 
the  innovators  were  liberal  enough  to  propose  receiving 
them  into  their  body,  it  was  only  on  condition  that,  what- 
ever they  might  think  of  the  new  principles  themselves, 
they  should  neither  impugn  nor  oppose  them  from  the 
pulpit  or  the  press.  Moderatism  would  have  received 
Fisher  and  the  Erskines  on  exactly  the  same  terms ;  and 
neither  the  Doctor  nor  his  coadjutors  were  unworthy  of 
the  first  fathers  of  the  Secession,  nor  disposed  to  act  a  part 
which  involved  a  dereliction  of  principle  so  gross.  The 
protesters,  therefore,  as  they  were  termed,  now  reduced  to 
four,  —  for  death  had  recently  been  thinning  their  num- 
bers, —  formed  themselves  into  a  Presbytery,  and  drew  up 
a  deed  of  constitution,  in  which  they  declared  that,  finding 
themselves  virtually  secluded  from  ministerial  and  Chris- 
tian communion,  and  unable,  with  a  good  conscience,  and 
consistently  with  their  vows,  to  comply  with  the  new 
terms,  they  were  reluctantly  driven  in  this  state  of  seclu- 
sion to  constitute  themselves  an  independent  body,  adher- 
ing to  the  true  constitution  of  the  Reformed  Church  of 
Scotland  and  the  original  Testimony.  The  synod,  mean- 
while, unconscious  of  what  was  passing,  was  employed  in 
deposing  one  of  the  refractory  four,  —  a  person  who  had 
rendered  himself,  particularly  obnoxious  to  some  of  the 
leading  members,  as  "  disorderly  and  a  schismatic  ; "  they 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  109 

were  still  sitting  when  the  intelligence  reached  them  of 
the  act  of  independence;  and,  with  a  haste  which  was  at 
least  indecent,  they  proceeded,  without  the  formalities  of  a 
legal  process,  to  pass  sentence  of  deposition  and  excommu- 
nication on  a  still  more  obnoxious  and  formidable  member 
of  the  body  —  Thomas  M'Crie.  He  was  deposed  and 
excommunicated,  therefore,  —  thrust  out  of  the  synagoo-ue 
for  conscience'  sake,  —  on  the  2d  September,  1806. 

A  time  of  great  suffering  ensued.     Very  brave  men  may 
bear  very  tender  hearts,  and  the  subject  of  our  brief  me- 
moir, though  there  never  lived  a  more  determined  asserter 
of  a  good  cause,  was  no  hard,  unfeeling  stoic.    The  sentence 
of  his  deposition  was  intimated  by  one  of  the  estranged 
brethren  of  the  majority,  from  his  own  pulpit ;  many  of 
his  old  friends  forsook  him,  and  more  than  half  his  peo- 
ple.    There  was  an  action  raised  against  him  in  the  Court 
of  Session,   which   terminated  in   wresting  from  him  his 
chapel.    He  saw  his  brethren  involved  in  the  same  general 
calamity ;    interdicts,    sheriff   officers,   legal   prosecutions, 
and  even  military  force,  called  into  action  against  them, 
and   employed,  strange  to  say,  in  carrying  into  effect  sen- 
tences grounded  expressly  on  ecclesiastical  censures,  and 
at  the  instance  of  enemies  to  all  magisterial  interference  in 
things  sacred.     But  error  is  ever  inconsistent.     Nor  is  the 
sum  of  his  sufferings  on  this  occasion  yet  complete.     He 
heard  the  gibes  of  his  brethren  in  the  Church  reechoed  by 
the  wits  of  the  bar  and  the  judges  on  the  bench  ;  he  found 
himself  isolated  in  the  midst  of  society,  —  shunned  even 
by  all  the  evangelical  ministers  of  Edinburgh  as  a  narrow- 
minded  and  obstinate  bigot,  —  a  man  who  could  bring  his 
wife  and  family  to  poverty  and  contempt  rather  than  abate 
one  jot  of  his  antiquated  and  metaphysical  scrujjles.    What 
supported  him  meanwhile  ?     A  firm    reliance  on  Divine 
guidance  and   support,  and  a  thorough  conviction  of  the 
goodness  of  his  cause.     "  What  am  I,"  he  has  exclaimed, 
"that  I  should  be  counted  worthy  to  suffer  shame  for  his 
name  ?  "    He  knew  well  upon  what  ground  he  had  planted 

10 


110  DR.  THOMAS   m'OKIE. 

his  foot.     If  he  was  in  the  wrong,  then  were  our  ancestors 
in  the  wrong  in  legalizing  the  profession  of  the  true  reli- 
gion ;  they  were  in  the  wrong  in  passing  laws  in  its  favor ; 
they  were  in  the  wrong  in  protecting  the  Sabbath ;  they 
were  in  the  wrong  in  repressing  gross  violations   of  the 
first  table  of  the  law;  they  were  in  the  wrong  in  all  their 
solemn  contracts,  —  in  the  covenants  by  which  the  Refor- 
mation, at  both  its  periods,  was  confirmed ;  they  were  in 
the   wrong   in   recognizing   religion   in  the  education  of 
youth,  in  the  administration  of  oaths,  and  in  the  admission 
to  all  places  of  power  and  trust.     A  question  involving 
points    of  such    mighty  importance    might  seem  merely 
metaphysical  to  others,  but  iiot  so  to  him.     He  contended 
for  what  he  deemed  a  great  practical  principle,  which  was 
in  all  time  to  affect  the  destinies  of  the  British  empire. 
He  held,  too,  that  the  principle  to  which  it  was  opposed — ■ 
that  of  the  Voluntary  —  was  incapable  of  defence,  except 
on  grounds  inconsistent  with  a  belief  in  divine  revelation; 
that  indirectly  but  infiillibly  it  led  to  infidelity  ;  and,  look- 
ing  far   into    the    future,  he    could   discern   through   the 
gloom,  impenetrable  to  other  eyes,  the  field  of  the  coming 
warfare  thronged   with  dim   shapes  of  terror  —  with  the 
threatening  faces  and  fiery  arms  of  the  yet  unawakened, 
perhaps   unborn,  combatants.     Nor  were  there  more  mel- 
ancholy moments  wanting,  when  he  saw  amid  the  darkness 
the  fall  of  age-hallowed  institutions,  and  the   short-lived, 
but  for  the  time  complete,  eclipse  of  religion  itself.     In 
referring  in  after  years  to  this  period  of  sufiering  and  trial, 
he  ever  spoke  of  his  opponents  in  a  subdued  and  placid 
spirit.     "Well,"  said  he  one  morning  to  a  friend,  "there's 
a  man  dead  who  took  the  trouble  of  coming  eighty  miles 
to  depose  me  from  the  ministry.     I  am  sure  I  have  had 
no   resentment   toward   him.     No  doubt  he  did  what  he 
considered  it  his  duty  to  do.     Yet  it  was  hard,  w^ith  a  wife 
and  family,  to  be  thrown  upon  the  world." 


BR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  Ill 


ARTICLE    THIRD. 


The  Court  of  Session  decided  that  Thomas  M'Crie,  and 
the  portion  of  his  congregation  which  continued  to  hold 
by  him,  had  forfeited  all  right  to  their  chapel.  There 
could  not  be  a  clearer  case.  They  were  found  guilty  of 
adherence  to  the  old  standards;  they  had  obstinately 
refused  to  alter  the  Confession  of  Faith  ;  they  had  con- 
tinued to  cling  to  the  original  Testimony;  they  had  even 
gone  so  fir  as  to  assert  that  magistrates,  as  such,  have 
religious  duties  to  perform;  and  it  was  but  strict  justice, 
therefore,  that  tliey  sliould  lose  their  chapel.  The  case 
was  decided  against  them  in  March,  1809,  and  the  decision 
has  no  doubt  been  carefully  registered  among  the  archives 
of  the  court  as  a  valuable  j^recedent.  The  poor  people 
who  suffered  by  it  were  not  numerous,  and  we  use  the 
right  phrase  when  we  say  that  they  were  poor ;  and  so, 
in  providing  their  deposed  and  excommunicated  minister 
with  another  chapel,  they  had  just  to  content  themselves 
with  an  obscure  building,  that  lay  hid  among  old  and  black- 
ened tenements  at  the  foot  of  Carrubber's  Close.  Rarely 
has  there  been  a  preacher  or  congregation  less  generally 
known.  "  There  now,"  said  the  late  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson 
to  a  friend,  after  listening,  at  a  subsequent  period,  to  one 
of  Dr.  M'Crie's  discourses,  —  "There  now  is  something  far 
beyond  the  compass  of  any  minister  in  our  Establishment." 
AYhat  would  have  been  thought  of  the  man  who  would 
have  said  as  much  in  the  year  1810  of  the  deposed  minister 
who  preached  in  Carrubber's  Close  ? 

During  this  period  of  obscurity  he  was  silently  employed 
on  his  first  great  work  — the  "Life  of  Knox."  He  had 
been  engaged  in  storing  up  materials  of  thought  from  even 
his  earliest  boyhood ;  and  for  at  least  the  last  seven  years 
he  had  been  contributing  largely  to  the  "Christian  Maga- 
zine," a  religious  periodical  edited  by  one  of  his  friends. 
But  "can  any  good  come  out  of  Galilee?"  No  one 
looked  for  powerful  writing  and  profound  research  in  the 


112 

humble  pages  of  a  Secession  Magazine ;  nor  was  it  discov- 
ered by  more  than  a  few  friends,  as  obscure  as  himself,  tliat 
his  "  Sketches  of  the  Reformation  in  Spain,"  or  his  biogra- 
phies of  French  and  Scotch  ministers  of  the  sixteenth  and 
seventeenth  centuries,  were  fraught  with  interesting  infor- 
mation, pleasingly  conveyed,  and  which  no  other  writer 
of  the  age  could  communicate.  "  It  is  pleasing,"  says 
Johnson,  "to  see  great  works  in  their  seminal  state,  preg- 
nant with  latent  possibilities  of  excellence."  In  some  of 
these  earlier  pieces  may  be  found  the  unexpanded  germ  of 
the  "Life  of  Knox;"  and  as  early  as  the  year  1803  he  had 
struck  out  his  j^lan  —  never,  alas !  fully  completed  —  of 
writing  the  history  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  a  series 
of  biographies.  But  the  more  immediate  cause  of  his 
undertaking  was  unquestionably  his  recent  controversy. 
The  pillar  of  history  is  sagaciously  placed  by  Bunyan  in 
the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  den  of  Giant  Pope ; 
and  fain,  he  tells  us,  would  the  giant  deface  its  inscrip- 
tions, were  it  not  carefully  guarded.  The  historian  felt 
how  necessary  it  was  to  erect  a  similar  pillar  among  the 
peoj^le  of  Scotland  —  a  pillar  which  none  of  the  enemies 
of  the  Church,  whether  they  sheltered  under  a  pretended 
liberalism,  like  the  men  who  had  cast  him  out  of  their 
communion,  or  accomplished  similar  ends  by  opposite 
means,  and  under  a  different  profession,  would  be  able  to 
obliterate  or  pull  down.  He  had  thoroughly  satisfied 
liiinself  that  the  system  of  doctrine  and  discipline  intro- 
duced by  our  first  "Reformers  and  Confessors"  was  not 
more  consonant  to  the  oracles  of  truth  than  conducive  to 
the  best  interests,  temporal  and  spiritual,  of  the  nation. 
He  had  set  himself,  therefore,  minutely  to  study  their 
history;  —  to  use  his  own  striking  language,  "then  the  fire 
began  to  burn  :"  nor  could  he  forbear  imparting  to  others 
what  he  himself  had  felt  so  strongly.  But  his  feeling  of 
admiration  was  not  for  the  men,  —  they  were  all  deceased, 
and  had  rendered  in  their  accounts,  —  but  for  the  grace 
and  gifts  with  which  God  had  endowed  them,  and  for  the 


DR.  THOMAS    M'cRIE.  113 

fibrio  which  they  had  been  honored  to  rear.  Late  in 
the  year  1811  his  "Life  of  Knox"  was  submitted  to  the 
public. 

There  is  much  interest  in  marking  the  first  reception  of 
works  of  great  genius,  destined  powerfully  to  influence 
public  opinion,  and  to  become  the  heir-looms  of  civilized 
man  in  all  after  ages;  —  to  see  them  at  times  painfully 
struggling  with  neglect,  at  times  well-nigh  borne  down 
by  the  malignancy  of  envious  opposition,  —  now* contend- 
ing with  some  blind  prejudice,  now  with  some  selfish 
interest,  —  awhile  repressed  by  the  severity  of  vulgar  and 
undiscerning  criticism,  awhile  by  the  conventionalities  of 
some  artificial,  but,  for  the  time,  established  mode;  and 
then  to  mark  them  rising  variously,  but  invariably,  to  their 
proper  place,  —  in  some  instances  by  a  slow  and  gradual 
process,  in  others  suddenly  and  at  once,  through  the 
influence  of  happy  accidents.  Cowper  was  told  by  one  of 
his  first  reviewers  that  he  might  be  a  very  honest  man, 
but  most  assuredly  he  was  no  poet;  and  poorKirke  White 
was  represented  as  a  beggar,  who  had  made  a  worthless 
book  a  pretence  for  gathering  money.  The  "  Life  of 
Knox"  was  destined  to  no  long  probation,  for  it  soon  fell 
under  the  notice  of  very  superior  men.  Shortly  after  its 
publication,  the  author's  old  favorite  professor,  Dugald 
Stewart,  —  certainly  the  most  eloquent,  if  not  the  most 
profound,  of  all  our  Scottish  metaphysicians,  —  was  con- 
fined one  Sunday  to  the  house  by  a  slight  indisposition. 
All  the  fxmily  were  at  church  except  his  man-servant,  an 
old  and  faithful  attendant;  and  the  Professor,  on  some 
occasion  which  required  his  services,  summoned  him  by 
the  bell.  To  his  surprise,  however,  the  careful  domestic 
did  not  appear,  and  the  bell  was  rung  again  and  again,  but 
with  no  better  effect.  The  Professor  then  stepped  down 
stairs  to  see  what  could  have  possibly  befallen  John,  and 
threw  open  the  door  of  the  old  man's  apartment.  And 
there,  sure  enough,  was  John,  leaning  over  a  little  table, 
and  engrossed  heart  and  soul  in  the  perusal  of  a  book,  as 

10* 


114  DR.  THOMAS    m'CRIE. 

unconscious  of  the  presence  of  his  master  as  he  had  been 
an  instant  before  of  the  ringing  of  the  bell.  The  Profes- 
sor's curiosity  was  aroused;  —  literature  was  rather  a  new 
pursuit  to  John; — and,  shaking  him  by  the  shoulder,  he 
inquired  what  book  it  was  that  had  so  wonderfully  capti- 
vated his  fancy.  "Why,  sir,"  said  John,  "it 's  a  book  that 
my  minister  has  written,  and  really  it's  a  grand  ane." 
The  Professor  brought  it  with  him  to  his  room,  to  try 
what  he  could  make  of  John's  minister's  book ;  and,  when 
once  fairly  engaged,  found  it  as  impossible  to  withdraw 
himself  from  it  as  John  himself  had.  He  finished  it  at 
a  sitting,  and  waited  next  day  on  the  author  to  express 
the  admiration  he  entertained  for  his  performance.  The 
Doctor  bowed  to  the  praises  of  his  old  Professor  with  the 
modesty  of  real  genius,  and  replied  in  one  of  those  happy 
compliments  which  show  the  elegant  and  delicate  mind, 
"  Pulchrwn  est  laudari  a  laudato^''  —  "  It  is  delightful  to 
be  praised  by  one  who  has  himself  gained  the  applauses  of 
mankind." 

The  "  Edinburgh  Review"  —  at  this  period  beyond 
comparison  the  most  powerful  periodical  in  Europe  — 
took  up  the  biography  of  Knox  in  the  same  spirit  with 
Dugald  Stewart.  An  air  of  surprise  and  admiration  so 
thoroughly  pervades  the  able  article  in  which  the  work  is 
reviewed,  that  it  seems  to  constitute  a  part  of  its  very 
style,  and  certainly  a  very  refreshing  part  of  it.  MT^enzie 
has  been  praised  for  the  shrewdness  he  evinced  in  at  once 
placing  Burns  among  the  great  masters  of  undying  song, 
at  a  period  when  at  least  nine-tenths  of  his  contemporaries 
thought  of  him  as  merely  a  clever  ploughman,  who  made 
very  passable  verses,  considering  that  he  was  but  an  un- 
taught man.  Lord  Jeffrey  was  equally  happy  in  marking 
out  the  proper  place  of  M'Crie.  He  at  once  characterized 
his  work  as  one  which  united  opposite  qualities  of  excel- 
lence, and  as  by  fir  the  best  piece  of  history  which  had 
appeared  since  the  conimencement  of  the  reviewer's  criti- 
cal career,  —  as  accurate,  learned,  and  concise,  and  yet  not 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  115 

the  less  full  of  spirit  and  animation ;  as  a  rare  union  of 
patient  research  and  sober  judgment,  with  boldness  of 
thinking  and  force  of  imagination.  Nothing  had  he  ever 
read  on  the  subject,  he  said,  which  had  afforded  him  so 
much  amusement  and  so  much  instruction ;  and  yet  this 
noble  production  was  the  work  of  an  author  of  whose  very 
existence,  though  residing  in  the  same  city  with  himself, 
he  had  never  heard  before.  The  Quarterly  Reviewers,  in 
spite  of  their  Episcopacy,  said  well-nigh  as  much.  With 
them,  as  with  their  contemporary,  "Dr.  M'Crie  was  really 
a  great  biographer."  Compact,  precise,  discriminating, 
simple,  vigorous,  profound  in  his  researches,  and  candid  in 
his  statements,  he  told  the  story  of  a  hero  as  a  hero  would 
wish  to  have  it  told.  Neither  Luther  nor  Calvin,  they 
said,  had  found  a  biographer  like  the  present:  and  yet, 
true  it  was  that  his  principles  were  bad.  He  held  by  the 
reformers  in  all  their  extremes ;  and  had  he  been  born  in 
the  sixteenth  century,  "less,"  they  were  persuaded,  "would 
have  been  heard  of  Rowe  or  Willox  as  auxiliaries  of  Knox 
than  of  M'Crie."  We  believe  they  were  perfectly  in  the 
right,  and  yet  think  none  the  worse  of  the  Doctor. 

He  rose  at  once  into  eminence.  The  University  of 
Edinburgh  honored  itself  by  conferring  upon  him  his 
degree,  the  first  ever  extended  in  Scotland  to  a  dissenting 
clergyman.  His  work  was  translated  into  the  French, 
Dutch,  and  German  languages,  and  spread  extensively  over 
the  continent.  History  assumed  a  new  tone  when  it  spoke 
of  the  deeds  and  the  character  of  Knox ;  monuments  were 
erected  and  clubs  instituted  to  his  memory;  candid  and 
honorable  men,  of  all  persuasions,  filled  the  periodicals  of 
the  time  with  their  recantations  of  the  error  into  which 
they  had  fallen  regarding  his  character;  and  the  powerful 
and  manly  reasonings  and  well-attested  facts  of  his  biog- 
rapher were  only  met  by  the  contemptible  puerilities  and 
garbled  misstatements  of  a  few  embryo  Puseyites,  and  at 
an  after  period  by  the  denunciations  of  the  Court  of  Rome. 
In  the  list  of  those  peculiarly  dangerous  writings,  among 


116  DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE. 

which  the  Bible  stands  preeminent,  the  infallible  church 
has  placed  at  least  one  of  the  productions  of  Dr.  M'Crie, 

—  by  far  the  highest  compliment  which  he  has  yet  received. 
But  the  effect  of  a  personal  nature  resulting  from  his  sud- 
den celebrity,  which  the  Doctor  himself  probably  valued 
most,  was  the  degree  of  friendship  and  esteem  which  it 
secured  to  him  from  kindred  spirits.  Dr.  Andrew  Thom- 
son—  whose  star,  of,  alas!  brief  but  matchless  brilliancy, 
had  at  that  time  just  risen  above  the  horizon  —  found  him 
out;  and  a  friendship,  based  on  mutual  admiration  and 
respect,  was  formed  between  these  two  great  and  good 
men,  whose  duration,  it  is  probable,  is  not  to  be  measured 
by  periods  of  time.  Except  on  one  unhappy  occasion, 
they  stood  side  by  side  in  all  their  after  controversies, 
employing  somewhat  dissimilar  weapons,  but  fighting 
under  the  same  shield.  Was  the  historian  assailed  by  the 
Episcopalian  critics  of  our  own  country  or  of  the  south? 

—  a  discharge  of  merciless  ridicule  and  resistless  argument 
from  his  friend  the  Churchman  prostrated  the  assailants. 
Did  his  friend  the  Churchman  refuse  opening  St.  George's 
at  the  bidding  of  the  state,  just  because  he  held  that 
the  Church  of  Scotland  was  not  an  Erastian  church  ? 
■ — out  stepped  the  historian  in  his  defence,  and  opposition 
sunk  overawed.  They  w^ere  often  together,  and  the  happy 
temper  of  both,  added  to  the  rich  humor  of  Dr.  Thomson, 
threw  an  air  of  jDCculiar  cheerfulness  over  their  intercourse. 
There  is  a  sunshiny  freshness  in  the  few  notes  which  have 
been  preserved  of  the  many  that  passed  between  them ; 
and  when  at  any  time  the  frequent  and  hearty  laugh  was 
heard  proceeding  from  the  historian's  study,  all  the  house- 
hold at  once  concluded  that  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  was 
there.  The  Doctor  was  more  than  half  a  phrenologist, 
and  used  at  times  to  try  whether  he  could  not  accommo- 
date the  cranial  development  of  his  friend  the  historian  to 
the  well-known  powers  of  his  mind.  In  some  respects  he 
was  singularly  unlucky,  and  his  blunders  seem  to  have 
furnished  large  occasion  of  mirth.     The  Doctor  flattered 


DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE.  117 

himself  on  one  occasion  that  he  had  discovered  a  large 
development  of  the  organ  of  music  on  the  corners  of  his 
friend's  forehead,  and  when  he  had  fully  assured  himself  of 
the  fact,  his  friend  quietly  informed  him  that  the  accom- 
panying musical  ear  was,  notwithstanding,  particularly  dull, 
and  that  one  of  the  most  arduous  tasks  which  he  had  ever 
seen  accomplished  was  the  task  undertaken  by  one  of  his 
acquaintances,  an  old  weaver,  who  had  set  himself  to  beat 
into  his  head  the  familiar  tune  of  /St.  FauVs.  We  find 
humorous  allusions  to  the  new  science  in  some  of  Dr. 
JM'Crie's  notes  referring  to  contributions  for  the  "  Christian 
Instructor."  "You  are  prodigiously  moderate,"  he  says, 
"in  your  expectations,  when  you  look  for  two  reviews  from 
me  in  one  month.  You  imagine,  I  suppose,  that  my  brain 
is  as  large  and  as  fertile  as  your  own,  —  a  mistake  which 
you  might  have  avoided  without  the  assistance  of  Dr. 
Spurzheim."  The  two  champions  stood,  as  we  have  said, 
side  by  side,  the  unflinching  opponents  of  slavery  in  the 
colonies  and  of  patronage  in  the  Church,  —  of  the  super- 
stition that  would  debase  religion,  and  of  the  infidelity 
that  would  overturn  it,  —  of  the  hirelings  of  Moderatism, 
the  wild  visionaries  of  Roweism,  and  the  incendiaries  of 
Voluntaryism,  —  till  the  younger  champion  dropped,  and 
died,  we  may  well  say,  in  his  harness,  cut  down  in  his  mid 
career  of  usefulness,  "when  best  employed  and  wanted 
most."  Deeply  was  the  survivor  aflfected;  and  many  of 
those  who  on  the  succeeding  Sabbath  heard  him  give  vent 
to  his  feelings  in  a  sudden  and  impassioned  burst,  have  not 
yet  forgotten  M'hat  the  passage  conveyed,  and  never  will. 
"  Brethren,  pray  for  us,  and  let  your  first  and  last  petition 
be  humility.  Once,  yea  twice,  has  a  voice  cried  to  the 
ministers  of  this  city,  and  again,  since  we  last  met,  it  hath 
cried  with  the  sound  of  a  trumpet,  '  All  flesh  is  grass,  and 
all  the  goodliness  thereof  is  as  the  flower  of  the  field ! ' 
The  time  has  not  come  at  which  ceremony  permits  the 
dead  to  be  spoken  of  in  public.  But  I  hasten  to  say  the 
little  which  I  have  to  say,  especially  as  it  is  not  in  the  way 


118  DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE. 

of  eulogy.  Others  will  praise  him :  as  for  mo,  I  can  only 
deplore  him.  And  my  deploration  shall  not  turn  on  the 
splendid  talents  with  which  his  Master  adorned  him, — 
the  vigor  of  liis  understanding,  the  grasp  of  his  intellect,  or 
the  unrivalled  force  of  his  masculine  eloquence;  but  on  his 
honest,  firm,  unflinching,  fearless  independence  of  mind, — a 
quality  eminently  required  in  the  present  time,  —  in  which, 
I  may  say,  he  was  single  among  his  fellows,  and  which 
claimed  for  him  respect  as  well  as  forbearance,  even  when 
it  betrayed  its  possessor  into  excess."  We  are  reminded 
strongly  by  this  truly  eloquent  passage  of  a  passage  which 
has  been  long  regarded  as  one  of  the  most  powerful  in 
English  literature,  —  the  concluding  part  of  the  last  chap- 
ter of  Sir  Walter  Raleigh's  « History  of  the  World : " 
"  O  earth,  earth,  earth !  thou  art  the  true  proprietor  and 
lord  paramount  of  all  that  is  here  below.  Thou  givest 
forth  nothing  but  what  thou  receivest  again,  and  thou 
receivest  thine  own  with  usury.  Grass,  herbs,  trees,  plants, 
houses,  metals  base  and  precious,  and  man  himself,  who 
hath  rifled  thee  of  all  these,  and  who  tears  thy  bosom  and 
digs  into  thy  bowels,  and,  measuring  thy  length  and  thy 
breadth,  proudly  walks  over  thee  as  if  he  were  more  than 
dust,  —  all  shall  return  to  thee,  and  find  a  grave  in  the 
womb  from  which  they  sprang." 


ARTICLE    FOURTH. 


Dr.  Johnson  has  occupied  a  whole  paper  of  the  "Idler" 
in  showing  that  the  biographies  of  authors  may  be  as  rich 
in  interest  as  the  biographies  of  any  class  of  persons  what- 
ever. No  lives,  he  remarks,  more  abound  in  sudden  vicis- 
situdes of  fortune,  and  over  no  class  of  men  do  hope  and 
fear,  expectation  and  disappointment,  grief  and  joy,  exer- 
cise a  larger  influence.  Goldsmith,  in  his  Life  of  Parnell, 
has  recorded  an  opposite  opinion ;  but  Goldsmith  did  not 
sufficiently  attend  to  his  own  history  —  a  history  quite  as 


DR.  THOxMAS    M'cRIE.  119 

striking  in  its  details  as  any  piece  of  fiction,  not  exceptino- 
even  his  own  exquisite  "  Vicar  of  Wakefield."  The  obscure 
surgeon-assistant,  whom  the  faculty  were  afraid  to  employ 
because  his  brogue  was  so  strong  and  his  appearance  so 
uncouth ;  the  imprudent  and  ruined  surety,  who,  forsak- 
ing his  obscure  little  shop  in  a  provincial  town,  fled  from 
his  creditors  to  avoid  a  jail;  the  poor  scholar  and  itiner- 
ant musician,  who  wandered  on  foot  over  France,  Belgium, 
and  Italy,  purchasing  a  supper  and  a  bed  with  his  tunes 
from  the  peasantry,  and  disputing  on  some  philosophical 
question  for  the  same  meed  and  a  piece  of  money  addi- 
tional with  the  learned  of  Ferrara  and  Padua,  —  was  the 
elegant  and  accomplished  author  whose  poetry,  a  few  years 
after,  was  to  be  rated  higher  than  that  of  Pope,  and  his  prose 
superior  to  that  of  Addison.  Dr.  Johnson  was  so  much  in 
the  right,  that,  to  establish  the  point,  one  has  but  to  appeal 
from  the  opinion  of  his  opponent  to  his  opponent's  biogra- 
phy. We  have  already  passed,  in  our  rapid  sketch,  over 
that  part  of  the  life  of  Dr.  M'Crie  most  marked  by  vicis- 
situde. The  novelist  or  the  poet  takes  but  a  portion  of 
individual  or  national  history  for  his  subject ;  —  the  curtain 
falls,  or  the  tale  closes,  when  the  hero  of  the  piece  has 
passed  from  one  extreme  of  fortune  to  another;  even  the 
boy  hears  no  more  of  Whittington  after  he  has  become 
Lord  Mayor  of  London,  or  of  Pepin  after  he  has  become 
King  of  France.  On  the  same  principle,  what  may  be 
termed  the  romance  of  the  Doctor's  life  closes  w^hen  the 
obscure  and  persecuted  preacher  of  Carrubber's  Close, 
known  only,  beyond  the  narrow  circle  of  his  friends,  wdien 
known  at  all,  as  a  narrow-minded  and  illiberal  sectarian, 
takes  his  undisputed  place  among  the  literati  of  his  coun- 
try as  beyond  comparison  the  first  historian  of  his  age, — 
as  a  great  master  of  public  opinion,  —  as  successful  above 
all  his  contemporaries  in  removing  long-cherished  prejudice 
and  misconception,  and  as  singularly  sagacious  in  seizing 
the  events  of  the  remote  future  in  the  imperfect  and 
embryo  rudiments  of  present  occurrences,  or  in  partially 


120 

developed  modes  of  feeling  and  thought.  But  in  the  por- 
tion of  his  history  whicli  remains,  though  little  checkered 
by  incident,  there  is  interest  of  a  different  kind.  It  is 
something  to  know  the  part  taken  by  such  a  man  in  the 
controversies  of  the  time  —  controversies  many  of  which 
still  survive ;  for  there  were  few  judgments  less  liable  to 
mistake,  and  no  honest  man  ever  questioned  his  integrity. 
Dr.  M'Crie  was  very  much  of  the  opinion  of  Cowley. 
Good  men,  says  the  prince  of  metaphysical  poets,  should 
pray  not  less  frequently  for  the  conversion  of  literature 
than  for  the  Jews.  No  one  better  knew  the  importance 
of  literature,  or  was  more  earnestly  solicitous  for  its  con- 
version, than  the  Doctor.  He  saw  every  species  of  power 
among  men,  whether  for  good  or  evil,  founded  in  opinion ; 
and  recognized  in  the  press  an  all-potent  lever,  through 
which  the  public  mind  may  be  either  heightened  or  de- 
pressed. He  was  aware,  too,  that  it  is  not  always  the  grave 
or  more  elaborate  works  which  produce  the  deepest  impres- 
sions. Songs  have  hastened  national  revolutions,  and  a 
single  romance  has  powerfully  affected  the  character  of  a 
country  ;  and  in  the  first  series  of  the  "  Tales  of  my  Land- 
lord," with  its  marvellously  unMr  representation  of  the 
Covenanters,  he  recognized  a  work  of  the  most  influential 
character,  and  influential  chiefly  for  evil.  Karely,  says  the 
poet,  has  Spain  had  heroes  since  Cervantes  laughed  away 
the  chivalry  of  his  country ;  and  it  was  a  class  beyond 
comparison  nobler  and  better  than  the  chivalry  of  Spain 
that  the  novelist  had  set  himself  to  laugh  down.  Dr. 
M'Crie's  review  of  the  "Tales"  appeared  in  the  "Christian 
Instructor"  for  1817,  and  produced  a  powerful  impression. 
Sir  Walter,  secure  in  his  strength,  had  felt  for  years  before 
that  he  could  well  afford  being  indifferent  to  criticism.  He 
had  a  firmer  hold  of  the  public  mind  than  any  of  his  review- 
ers; the  occasional  critique  either  reechoed  his  praises  in 
tones  caught  from  the  general  voice,  and  then  sank  unheeded, 
or  dared  to  dispute  the  justice  of  the  almost  universal  deci- 
sion in  his  favor  and  sank  all  the  sooner  in  consequence.    So 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  121 

far  was  he  from  deeming  the  strictures  of  a  hostile  reviewer 
worthy  of  reply,  that  he  had  ceased  to  deem  them  worthy 
of  perusal.     On  this  occasion,  however,  he  found  he  had 
to  deal  with  no  ordinary  critic ;  the  stream  of  public  opin- 
ion had  been  turned  fairly  against  him  ;  and,  after  record- 
ing his  determination  not  even  to  read  the  Doctor's  article, 
he  eventually  found  it  necessary  not  only  to  read,  but  also 
to  attempt  answering  it,  which  he  did  in  the  "  Quarterly," 
in  the  form  of  a  critique  on  his  own  work.      Hogg  has 
informed  us  how  invariably  favorable  Sir  Walter  as  a  critic 
was  to  Sir  Walter  as  an  author.     He,  of  course,  decided 
that  his  "Tales"  were  very  excellent  tales,  and  that  the 
Covenanters  were  in  no  degree  better  than  he  had  described 
them ;  referring  for  proof  to  a  few  insulated  facts  as  valu- 
able in  proving  general  propositions,  as  if  it  were  to  be 
inferred  from  the  history  of  the  Rev.  Titus  Oates  that  all 
the  clergy  of  England  were  perjured  miscreants,  or  fi'om 
that  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Dodd  that  they  were  all  malefactors, 
and  deserved  to  be  hung.     His  article  had  its  weight  with 
a  few  High   Churchmen,  zealously  prepared  to  believe  on 
the  side  of  Claverhouse  without  the  trouble  of  thought  or 
scrutiny;  but  in  the  estimate  of  the  less  prejudiced  classes, 
both  in  England  and  our  OAvn   country,  victory  remained 
as  unequivocally  on  the  side,  of  Dr.  M'Crie  and  the  Cov- 
enanters as  if  the  reply  had  never  been  written. 

The  "Life  of  Andrew  Melville"  appeared  about  two 
years  after,  in  1819.  It  maybe  regarded  as  a  continuation 
of  the  history  of  the  Scottish  Church,  so  auspiciously  begun 
in  the  "  Life  of  Knox,"  and  displays  the  same  poAver  and 
discrimination  exhibited  in  that  work,  with  even  more  than 
the  same  amazing  profundity  of  research.  It  was  remarked, 
it  is  said,  by  the  present  Lord  Jeffrey,  that  one  would  re- 
quire several  years'  additional  reading  to  qualify  one's  self 
for  the  task  of  reviewing  it.  The  Doctor  had  got  into  a 
walk  of  information,  the  intricacies  of  which  were  known  to 
only  himself;  and  critics  of  the  highest  class  were  content 
to  set  their  craft  aside,  and,  taking  the  place  of  ordinary 

11 


122 

readers  under  him,  were  fain,  instead  of  leading  others, 
to  be  followers  themselves.  Regarded  simply  as  a  piece 
of  narrative,  it  has  been  found  to  possess  less  interest  than 
the  "Life  of  Knox."  The  writer  has  not  performed  his 
part  less  ably;  but  the  subject  of  his  memoir,  if  not  less  a 
hero  than  his  great  predecessor,  the  reformer,  had  lived  a 
life  of  less  stormy  interest,  and  had  found  feebler,  if  not 
less  insidious  spirits,  with  which  to  contend.  But  the  his- 
tory of  Melville  will  ever  continue,  notwithstanding,  to  be 
regarded  as  emphatically  the  history  of  the  Scottish  Church 
for  the  stirring  and  eventful  period  which  it  embraces. 
The  High  Churchmen  of  the  "British  Critic"  were  less 
candid  and  less  knowing  than  the  editor  of  the  "  Edin- 
burgh Review;"  and,  making  their  own  ignorance  the 
measure  of  their  censure,  they  were  of  course  very  severe. 
Authorities  of  which  they  knew  nothing  might  be  garbled 
and  misquoted,  they  said,  without  their  being  aware  of  the 
fact;  and  it  could  not  be  held,  therefore,  that  the  "bold, 
rebellious  fanatics  who  figured  prominently  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Scottish  Reformation"  could  be  in  reality  the 
good,  honest  men  which  the  Presbyterian  historian  had 
proved  them  to  be.  The  argument  seems  unanswerable  ; 
and  as  ignorance  in  one  set  of  men  is  quite  as  good  as 
ignorance  in  any  other  set,  there  can  be  no  faith  in  history 
so  long  as  the  Churchmen  of  the  "British  Critic,"  or  any 
other  sort  of  people,  remain  unacquainted  with  the  data  on 
which  the  historians  have  founded. 

The  Doctor  rarely  took  any  part  in  public  meetings. 
Though  an  eloquent  and  impressive  speaker,  and  at  once 
qualified  to  delight  by  the  manner  and  instruct  by  the 
matter  of  his  addresses,  his  native  modesty  led  him  to  rate 
his  capabilities  for  the  platform  lower  than  every  one  else 
rated  them.  He  felt,  too,  that  he  was  not  neglecting  his 
duty  so  long  as  he  was  engaged  in  his  own  peculiar  walk, 
—  the  walk  in  which  he  excelled  all  his  contemporaries, — 
and  so  long  as  he  saw  every  public  measure  in  which  he 
felt  an  interest  furnished  with  its  zealous  and  appropriate 


DR.  THOMAS   M'cRIE.  123 

champions.  Ilis  friend  Andrew  Thomson  was  the  power- 
ful assailant  of  the  Apocrypha  and  the  slave-trade ;  and 
the  cause  of  the  Scottish  poor  might  well  be  entrusted  to 
Dr.  Chalmers.  There  were  questions  and  causes,  however, 
for  which  he  could  deem  it  a  duty  to  mount  the  platform. 
Many  of  our  readers  will  remember  the  apathy  with  which 
a  large  proportion  of  the  British  public  regarded  the  long, 
protracted,  and  bloody  struggle  of  the  Greeks  with  theTr 
cruel  and  tyrannical  taskmasters.  The  country  had  grown 
too  mercantile  to  be  generous;  the  interests  of  some  of  our 
trading  bodies  were  compromised  ;  it  had  become  impru- 
dent to  be  sympathetic.  The  Greeks  had  grown  too  base 
and  degraded,  it  was  affirmed,  to  be  either  deserving  of 
freedom  or  capable  of  enjoying  it;  and  so  they  Avere  left 
to  fight  more  than  half  the  battle  of  liberty,  not  only  with- 
out assistance,  but  without  sympathy.  But  the  Doctor 
indulged  in  other  feelings,  and  reasoned  on  other  princi- 
ples. He  could  sympathize  with  the  ojipressed  Greeks,  not 
only  as  a  scholar,  richly  imbued  with  the  spirit  of  the 
ancient  literature  of  their  country,  but  also  as  a  Christian, 
deeply  interested  in  their  welfare  as  men ;  nor  had  he 
learned,  in  the  prosecution  of  his  studies,  to  deem  the  strug- 
gles of  even  a  semi-barbarous  j^eople  as  of  little  impor- 
tance. The  accident  which  befalls  an  individual  in  his 
immature  childhood  frequently  influences  his  destiny  for 
life ;  and  it  is  so  also  with  countries.  The  Irish  were  not 
a  civilized  people  when  conquered  by  the  English  under 
Strongbow,  nor  yet  the  Scotch  when  they  bafiled  and 
defeated  the  same  enemy  under  Cressingham  and  Edward 
II. ;  but  who  can  doubt  that  the  present  state  of  Scotland 
and  Ireland  depends  materially  upon  the  very  opposite 
results  of  their  respective  struggles?  At  the  first  meeting 
held  in  behalf  of  the  Greeks  in  Scotland,  —  we  believe 
in  Britain,  —  Dr.  M'Crie  took  the  lead,  and  delivered  an 
address  of  great  eloquence  and  power,  which  had  much 
the  eflect  of  exciting  the  public  interest,  and  which  united 
what  is  not  often  conjoined —  a  manner  singularly  popular 


124  DR.  THOMAS   m'CRIE. 

and  pleasing,  with  much  profundity  of  thought,  and  infor- 
mation dra\yn  from  the  less  accessible  sources.  At  an 
after  period,  when  the  struggle  had  terminated  in  the  free- 
dom of  Greece,  the  ladies  of  Edinburgh  exerted  themselves 
in  raising  funds,  through  which  it  was  proposed  to  extend 
the  advantages  of  education  to  the  long-neglected  females 
of  that  country.  The  Doctor  gave  the  scheme  his  warmest 
support;  he  preached  in  its  behalf  the  sermon  so  highly 
eulogized  by  Andrew  Thomson  as  something  beyond  the 
reach  of  his  contemporary  ministers  of  the  Establishment, 
conducted  the  correspondence  of  the  Association  origi- 
nated to  carry  it  on,  and  at  a  public  meeting  appealed 
to  the  country  in  its  favor.  Some  of  the  ladies,  his  coad- 
jutors in  the  scheme,  had  conceived  of  the  Doctor  merely 
as  a  person  of  one  talent  —  one  of  the  most  common  con- 
ceptions imaginable  ;  they  liad  no  idea  that  the  man  who 
excelled  all  his  contemporaries  in  research  could  excel 
most  of  them  in  eloquence  also.  They  knew  that  no  one 
could  surpass  him  in  argument  or  narrative,  and  therefore 
for  argument  and  narrative  they  looked  to  him;  but  to 
delight  the  meeting  with  the  poetry  of  the  subject,  to 
recall  the  old  classic  associations,  to  appeal  powerfully  to 
the  feelings,  —  to  do  all  they  supposed  the  Doctor  was  not 
capable  of  doing,  —  they  secured  the  services  of  the  late 
Sir  James  Mackintosh.  One  of  them  even  went  so  far  as 
to  tell  the  Doctor  of  their  arrangement,  in  which  he  readily 
acquiesced.  When  the  meeting  came,  however,  they  were 
all  convincingly  shown  that  he  could  do  more  than  argue 
and  narrate.  "  His  address,"  says  a  writer  in  an  English 
periodical,  "distinguished  throughout  by  the  most  thorough 
acquaintance  with  the  politics,  philosophy,  mythology,  and 
i:)oetry  of  ancient  Greece,  commingled  with  the  happiest 
allusions  to  these  so  fervid  a  contrast  of  her  ancient  glory 
with  her  modern  degradation,  that,  new  and  foreign  as 
such  topics  were  thouglit  to  be  to  the  habits  of  the  good 
Doctor,  his  speech  reminded  many  of  his  hearers  of  the 
finest  speeches  of  Burke." 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  125 

The  year  1827  was  what  we  would  have  termed  a  year 
of  triumph  to  Dr.  M'Crie,  had  the  conscientious  stand  for 
what  he  deemed  a  great  principle,  which  had  subjected 
him  to  so  much  persecution  rather  more  than  twenty  years 
before,  borne  any  reference  to  the  opinion  or  the  approval 
of  men.  He  had  stood  with  his  few  brethren  on  the  ground 
occupied  by  the  fathers  of  the  Secession  and  the  first 
reformers  of  the  Church,  and  had  seen  well-nigh  the  entire 
body  to  whom  he  had  been  united,  but  who  had  cast  him 
off,  carried  away  on  a  new  and  untried  course  of  peril  and 
defection,  which  would  terminate,  he  augured,  in  the 
wreck  of  all  those  principles  for  which  their  fathers  had  so 
zealously  contended.  The  body,  however,  had  contained 
many  excellent  men,  who,  less  sagacious  than  the  Doctor, 
were  yet  not  less  attached  to  the  original  principles  of  the 
Secession,  and  who  had  been  led  from  off  the  ground  occu- 
pied by  the  first  reformers,  merely  in  the  hope  of  reforming 
a  little  further.  But  the  experience  of  twenty  years  had 
sufficed  to  teach  them  that  their  liberalism  had  led  them 
astray.  About  seven  years  before,  on  the  union  of  the 
Burgher  and  Antiburgher  synods,  a  considerable  body 
of  this  class,  thoroughly  convinced  that  the  Secession  was 
drifting  from  its  original  moorings,  had  formed  themselves 
into  a  separate  synod ;  and  now  in  this  year,  finding  that 
they  were  contending  for  the  same  grand  truths  with  the 
Doctor  and  his  brethren,  they  again  entered,  through 
mutual  agreement,  into  communion  with  them,  and  were 
reunited,  as  of  old,  into  one  body.  They  virtually  con- 
fessed that  the  excommunicated  and  deposed  minority  had 
occupied  all  along  the  true  position  —  a  position  to  which 
they  themselves  now  deemed  it  necessary  to  return.  Such 
are  some  of  the  honors  reserved  for  the  men  who,  through 
good  and  evil  report,  steadily  adhere  to  the  truth.  With 
a  magnanimity,  however,  natural  to  his  character.  Dr. 
M'Crie  "steadily  refused,"  says  his  biographer,  "either  to 
exact  or  receive  from  his  former  associates  any  acknowl- 
edgment of  the  illegality  or  severity  of  the  sentences  passed 

11* 


126  DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE. 

by  the  General  Synod  against  himself  or  his  brethren.  The 
honor  of  the  truth  was  all  that  he  cared  to  vindicate ;  his 
own  he  left  in  the  hands  of  his  Divine  Master." 


ARTICLE    FIFTH. 

Two  of  the  later  literary  works  of  Dr.  M'Crie  bear  in 
history  such  a  relation  to  his  two  earlier  productions,  the 
Lives  of  Melville  and  Knox,  as,  in  the  drama,  tragedy  bears 
to  comedy.  A  cloud  of  disaster  darkened  the  closing  scene 
of  the  life  of  Melville,  but  the  existence  of  the  Scottish 
Church  in  the  present  day  shows  that  he  did  not  dare  and 
suffer  in  vain.  The  cloud  w^as  a  temporary  one.  The  seed 
which  he  had  sown  lay  dormant  for  a  while,  but  it  ultimately 
sprang  up  and  bore  fruit  abundantly.  The  biographies  of 
Melville  and  Knox  constitute,  therefore,  the  history  of  a 
successful  reformation  ;  his  later  works  —  the  Sketches 
of  the  Reformation  in  Spain  and  Italy  —  form  the  his- 
tories of  unsuccessful  ones.  The  beacon-light  was  kindled 
but  to  be  extinguislied ;  the  seed  w^as  sown  but  to  die. 
Both  works  read  an  important  lesson,  and  both  are  probably 
destined  to  produce  important  effects,  in  the  future,  in  the 
countries  to  which  they  relate.  The  "  History  of  the  Ref- 
ormation in  Italy "  has  been  translated  into  the  Dutch, 
French,  and  German  languages ;  and  in  the  fear,  doubtless, 
of  its  being  translated  into  the  Italian  also,  the  Court  of 
Rome  has  done  it  the  honor  of  inserting  it  in  the  "Index 
Expurgatorius,"  as  a  work  peculiarly  obnoxious.  The 
"History  of  the  Reformation  in  Spain"  has  lately  been 
translated  into  German.  Both  works  are  acquiring  a  con- 
tinental celebrity;  and  when  the  time  shall  come  —  and  it 
may  not  now  be  very  distant  —  when,  according  to  Mil- 
ton, the  "blood  and  ashes"  sown  over  the  fields  "where 
still  doth  sway  the  triple  tyrant,"  shall  begin  to  bear  fruit, 
the  fiithful  record  of  the  fierce  and  relentless  hatred  of 
the  persecutor,  and  of  the  sufferings  unflinchingly  endured 


127 

and  the  deaths  joyfully  welcomed  for  the  truth's  sake  by 
his  oppressed  victims,  may  exert  no  little  influence  in 
hastening  the  foil  of  the  one  and  leading  to  an  imitation 
of  the  other. 

The  Doctor  was  employed  in  j^ursuing  his  researches, 
adding  instance  to  instance  of  the  cruelty  and  perfidy  of 
Popery,  and  accumulating  proof  upon  proof  that  its  atroci- 
ties have  not  been  restricted  to  one  country  or  confined 
to  one  age,  when  the  bill  for  admitting  Roman  Catholics 
into  places  of  power  and  trust  was  introduced  by  the  gov- 
ernment. In  the  preceding  year  he  had  taken  an  active 
interest  in  petitioning  for  the  abolition  of  the  Test  and 
Corporation  acts.  He  was  too  shrewd  not  to  recognize 
the  measure  as  merely  a  preparatory  one,  and  which  could 
not  fail  to  terminate  in  Catholic  emancipation.  But  he 
was  not  one  of  the  class  who  can  withhold  from  doing 
what  is  right  in  itself  because  something  not  so  right  may 
follow.  He  believed,  with  Cowper,  that  these  acts  involved 
a  gross  profanation  of  things  sacred  ;  that  they  converted 
the  symbols  of  "redeeming  grace"  into  mere  "picklocks," 
through  which  the  unscrupulous  entered  into  ofiice,  but 
by  which  the  conscientious  were  excluded;  and  hence  the 
zeal  with  which  he  urged  tlieir  abolition.  He  now  took  as 
active  a  part,  and  on  quite  the  same  principle,  in  opposing 
the  emancipation  of  the  Catholics.  He  advocated  the  pre- 
liminary measure  because  he  deemed  it  essentially  right, 
and  denounced  and  opposed  the  measure  to  whicli  it  had 
led  as  radically  wrong,  —  as  a  measure,  too,  to  be  dreaded 
and  deprecated  in  its  effects  as  one  of  the  most  ruinous  of 
modern  legislation.  He  was  convinced,  he  said,  that  the 
ministry  of  the  day  would  succeed  in  carrying  their  object; 
such  seemed  to  be  the  intention  of  Providence  in  permit- 
ting the  union  of  parties  hitherto  opposed,  and  in  suflering 
even  "our  prophets"  to  be  carried  away  by  a  spirit  of 
delusion ;  but  he  felt  it  necessary  to  do  all  he  could  in  the 
matter,  by  way  of  personal  exoneration  ;  he  felt  opposi- 
tion, however  fruitless,  to  be  his  duty.     "  We  have  been 


128  DR.  THOMAS   m'CEIE. 

told,"  he  said,  "from  a  high  quarter,  to  avoid  such  subjects, 
unless  we  wish  to  rekindle  the  flames  of  Smithfield,  now 
long  forgotten.  Long  forgotten !  where  forgotten  ?  In 
heaven  ?  No.  In  Britain  ?  God  forbid.  They  may  be  for- 
gotten at  St.  Stephen's  or  Westminster  Abbey,  but  they 
are  not  forgotten  in  Britain.  And  if  ever  such  a  day 
arrives,  the  hours  of  Britain's  prosperity  have  been  num- 
bered." A  petition  to  the  Legislature  against  the  Catholic 
claims,  which,  whatever  might  be  thought  of  its  object, 
could  not  be  regarded  as  other  than  a  document  of  extra- 
ordinary ability,  was  drawn  up  by  Dr.  M'Crie,  and  received 
the  signatures  of  rather  more  than  thirteen  thousand  per- 
sons. We  are  ill  qualified  to  decide  on  the  part  taken 
on  this  occasion  by  the  Doctor.  There  were  very  excel- 
lent and  very  sagacious  men  —  men  little  moved  by  the 
arguments  of  mere  expediency  —  who  exerted  themselves 
on  the  opposite  side ;  nor  was  it  easy  to  see  what  other 
course  remained  for  our  legislators,  in  the  peculiar  circum- 
stances of  the  country,  than  the  course  which  they  adopted. 
The  Catholics  seemed  prepared  for  a  civil  war,  and  at  least 
nine-tenths  of  our  Protestants  were  determined  not  to 
fight  in  such  a  quarrel.  We  would  not  have  signed  Dr. 
M'Crie's  petition  at  the  time  ;  had  an  opportunity  occurred, 
we  would  have  readily  appended  our  signature  to  the  list 
which  contained  the  names  of  Thomson  and  of  Chalmers. 
Eleven  years,  however,  have  since  passed  :  the  government 
of  Ireland  is  well-nigh  as  great  a  problem  now  as  it  was 
then  ;  the  struggle  between  Protestantism  and  Popery  still 
continues,  with  this  difference,  that  the  advantage  is  now 
more  on  tlie  side  of  the  enemy,  without  his  being  in  any 
degree  less  bitter  in  his  enmity;  the  power  of  the  priest 
is  nothing  lessened ;  the  success  of  the  missionary  or  tlie 
triumph  of  the  Bible  is  nothing  increased.  We  are  afraid, 
in  short,  that  the  part  taken  by  the  Doctor  did  not  run  so 
counter  to  his  profound  sagacity  in  such  matters  as  at  one 
time  we  might  possibly  have  thought;  nay,  more,  we  are 
somewhat  afraid  that  events  are  in  the  course  of  showino: 


DR.  THOMAS    m'cRIE.  129 

it  did  not  run  counter  to  it  at  all.  As  little,  however,  can 
we  avoid  feeling  that,  should  the  worst  come  to  the  worst, 
Protestantism  on  its  present  ground  would  have  at  least  a 
clearer,  if  not  a  better  quarrel  thim  on  its  former  post  of 
advantage  ;  and  that  if  Popery,  unlike  an  ancient  wrestler, 
could  not  have  contended  with  most  success  when  beneath 
its  opponent,  it  would  at  least  have  to  contend  with  an 
opposition  less  hearty,  and  encouraged  by  a  sympathy 
deeper  and  more  general. 

Three  years  after.  Dr.  M'Crie  again  deemed  it  his  duty 
to  come  publicly  forward  and  record  his  conscientious  dis- 
approval of  another  political  measure,  —  the  Irish  Educa- 
tional scheme,  with  its  carefully  culled  scriptural  lesson- 
book.  His  estimate  of  the  statesmanship  of  the  present 
day  was  far  from  high ;  but  it  was  not  an  estimate  that  any 
one  party  would  choose  to  quote  with  the  view  of  better- 
ing their  own  character  at  the  expense  of  that  of  the  party 
opposed  to  them.  Nor  was  it  much  more  favorable  to  the 
people  than  to  the  people's  rulers;  for,  though  the  Doctor 
loved,  he  could  not  flatter  them.  "  It  has  been  my  opinion 
fixedly  for  some  time,"  he  remarks,  in  a  letter  to  a  friend, 
"  that  any  administration  to  be  formed  at  present,  whig 
or  tory,  would  sacrifice  religion  on  the  shrine  of  political 
expediency;  and  'my  people,'  provided  their  temporary 
and  worldly  views  were  gratified,  would  '  love  to  have  it 
so.'  This  is  my  political  creed."  He  held  that  the  scheme 
which  he  opposed  involved  a  principle  on  which  the  very 
foundations  of  Protestantism  rested ;  and  that  it  was 
taking  a  view  of  the  subject  radically  false  to  regard  the 
book  of  selected  extracts  in  the  same  light  with  collections 
of  passages  drawn  up  for  purposes  of  mere  economy ;  seeing 
that  these  extracts  were  confessedly  made  to  conciliate  the 
prejudices  of  a  class  who  deny  the  right  of  the  laity  to  the 
use  of  the  whole  Bible.  We  are  not  unacquainted  with 
the  arguments  which  have  been  urged  on  the  opposite  side, 
and  they  are  at  least  plausible.  We  have  little  doubt, 
however,  that  ultimately  it  will  be  found  that  the  Doctor 


130 

was  in  the  right ;  and  we  are  inclined  to  think  that  by 
jDlacing  the  question,  through  a  slight  alteration  of  the 
terms,  more  in  a  secular  light,  the  soundness  of  his  views 
would  be  more  generally  recognized.  Suppose  the  entire 
Scriptures  consisted  of  the  decalogue  alone ;  that  a  sound 
criticism  had  proved,  as  it  has  jj roved,  the  integrity  of 
every  one  of  the  ten  commandments  which  compose  it, 
and  that  all  Protestants  were  thoroughly  convinced  of 
their  Divine  origin ;  suppose  that  Popery  treated  four  of 
the  ten  in  exactly  the  way  in  which  it  sometimes  treats 
one  of  the  ten,  —  that  it  liad  not  only  struck  out  the  Divine 
prohibition  of  idolatry,  but  the  prohibition  also  against 
theft,  murder,  and  adultery,  —  would  any  government,  five- 
sixths  of  which  were  Protestants,  so  much  as  dream  of 
forming  an  educational  scheme  for  both  Protestants  and 
Papists,  through  which,  out  of  respect  to  the  prejudices 
of  the  latter,  only  six  of  the  commandments  —  the  per- 
mitted six —  would  be  taught  ?  And  yet,  either  the  Bible, 
as  a  whole,  is  no  revelation,  addressed  as  it  is  to  the  peo- 
ple as  a  body,  not  to  any  particular  class  of  functionaries, 
or  the  same  rule  must  apply  to  it  too.  Or,  again,  suppose 
that  Popery,  instead  of  forbidding  the  perusal  of  the  whole 
Scriptures,  forbade  the  acquirement  of  the  art  of  reading 
altogether,  leaving  the  other  branches  of  education  open, 
such  as  arithmetic,  drawing,  and  the  mathematics,  —  would 
a  liberal  government  once  think  of  closing  with  it  on  such 
terms,  or  exclude  reading  from  its  schools,  in  deference  to 
a  prejudice  so  illiberal?  And  if  a  prejudice  against  secu- 
lar knowledge  is  to  be  overborne  and  denounced,  why 
respect  a  prejudice  against  religious  knowledge  ?  But  our 
limits,  and  the  character  of  our  sketch,  forbid  an  examina- 
tion of  the  question  ;  and  we  refer  the  reader  to  the  pow- 
erful and  eloquent  speech  of  the  Doctor  on  the  subject, 
appended  to  his  biography.  He  was  no  way  appalled  at 
finding  himself  standing  in  a  slender  minority;  he  had 
been  in  the  minority,  he  said,  all  his  life  long;  and  the 
truth  has  often  shared  the  same  fate  with  Dr.  M'Crie.     On 


DR.  THOMAS   M'cRIE.  131 

an  attempt  being  made  to  disturb  the  meeting,  of  that  low 
and  disreputable  character  so  often  resorted  to  on  similar 
occasions,  and  in  which  brute  noise  is  brought  to  bear 
against  argument,  —  tlie  mere  animal  against  the  moral 
and  rational  agent,  —  the  Doctor  stepped  forward,  and  told 
the  disturbers,  with  much  emphasis,  to  "  recollect  that  they 
had  to  do  with  men,  and  with  men  who  were  not  accus- 
tomed to  be  browbeat."  His  spirit  rose  with  opposition, 
and  kindled  at  every  show  of  oppression  and  injustice  ; 
and  though  the  shouts  and  bellowings  of  a  score  or  two 
of  Liberals^  determined  to  tolerate  only  the  principles  of 
their  own  party,  might  drown  his  voice,  just  as  the  kettle- 
drums of  Dalyell  and  Claverhouse  drowned  the  voices  of 
the  Covenanters  in  their  scaffold  addresses,  no  one  could 
better  exert  the  influence  of  that  moral  force  before  which 
all  such  brute  violence  must  ultimately  quail. 

The  Voluntary  controversy,  in  which  he  had  entered  so 
early,  had  become  what  he  had  predicted  —  an  all-impor- 
tant conflict,  recognized  by  every  one  as  of  the  first  im- 
portance. Men  of  some  religion  and  men  of  none  had 
made  common  cause,  though  with  a  different  object,  —  the 
one  against  church  establishments,  the  other  against  Chris- 
tianity itself;  and  the  Doctor  could  now  look  forward  to  a 
time  when  the  better  materials  of  the  combination  would 
be  reduced  to  well-nigh  the  level  of  the  worst,  and  the 
religious  degradation  of  the  men  from  whom  he  had  parted 
company  more  than  twenty  years  before  would  be  rendered 
apparent  to  all.  It  was  one  of  his  first  principles,  "  that 
society  is  a  corporate  body,  and  has  rights  and  duties  of 
the  same  kind  as  those  of  the  individual;"  nor  could  he 
believe,  therefore,  in  his  thorough  conviction  of  the  im- 
portance of  religion,  that  religion  would  hold  other  than 
the  first  place  among  national  concerns.  Still,  his  antici- 
pations were  gloomy  when  he  thought  of  the  Establish- 
ment. Though  persuaded,  as  we  have  already  said,  that 
"the  Voluntary  principle  was  not  only  untenable,  but 
incapable  of  defence,  except  on  grounds  inconsistent  with  a 


132  DR.  THOMAS   M'CEIE. 

belief  in  Divine  revelation,  and  directly  but  infallibly  lead- 
ing to  infidelity,"  no  man  could  see  better  how  much  of 
abuse  and  corruption  had  crept  into  our  national  Church, 
and  how  strenuously  every  measure  of  reform  would  be 
resisted  through  the  blind  and  suicidal  selfishness  of  her 
professed  but  hollow  friends,  and  the  hostility  of  her  clearer- 
sighted  enemies.  He  often  anticipated,  therefore,  a  dis- 
astrous result  of  the  controversy,  and  a  season  of  general 
suffering  and  perturbation,  in  which  all  classes  would  be 
fearfully  taught  the  value  of  religion  through  the  want  of 
it.  At  times,  however,  his  views  would  brighten  ;  and  we 
find  him,  in  one  of  his  happier  moods,  thus  addressing  a 
correspondent :  "Is  it  yet  time  for  me  to  commence  a  can- 
vass for  John  Knox's  Church  ?  I  have  heard  that  Adam 
Gib,  to  a  considerably  late  period  in  his  life,  expressed  the 
hope  that  he  would  preach  in  St.  Giles's.  You  know  the 
practical  inference.  Yet  we  do  injury  to  more  than  our 
own  happiness  by  dealing  harshly  with  kind  hope,  repress- 
ing her  ardor,  and  chiding  her  for  those  lamb-like  friskings 
in  which  she  indulges  to  please  us." 

And  he  did  he&iir  himself  in  the  behalf  "  of  John  Knox's 
church ; "  but  it  was  not  by  striking  at  her  enemies,  but  by 
striking  at  one  of  the  main  abuses  which  had  entered  into 
her  system  —  the  abuse  of  patronage.  And  the  blow  was 
dealt  by  no  feeble  or  unpractised  hand.  The  cause  was 
of  importance  enough  to  bring  him  to  the  platform.  He 
attended,  in  the  beginning  of  1833,  a  meeting  of  the  Anti- 
Patronage  Society,  and  delivered  a  powerful  and  impres- 
sive speech,  in  which  he  advocated  the  total  abolition  of 
patronage,  as  the  sole  means  of  saving  the  Establishment. 
And  perhaps  on  no  occasion  was  the  magnanimity  of  the 
man  more  strikingly  shown  than  in  the  concluding  portion 
of  this  address,  or  brought  out  in  broader  contrast  with 
the  no  doubt  widely  opposite  but  equally  selfish  feelings 
of  the  class  who,  rather  than  relinquish  their  miserable 
powers  of  patronage,  would  stand  and  see  the  Church 
overwhelmed  amid  the  surges  of  popular  anarchy,  or  the 


DH.  THOMAS    m'cRIE.  1C3 

class  —  anxious  to  fill  their  meeting-houses  —  who,  like  the 
■ureckers  of  Cornwall,  exert  themselves  with  a  view  to  her 
destruction,  in  the  hope  of  j^rofiting  by  the  wreck.  "If 
you  succeed  in  your  object,"  said  the  Doctor,  "you  will  do 
much  harm,  —  you  will  thin,  much  thin,  my  congregation. 
For  I  must  say  that,  though  patronage  were  abolished  to- 
morrow, I  could  not  forthwith  enter  into  the  Establishment. 
But  I  am  not  so  blind  or  so  ignorant  of  the  dispositions  of 
the  people  as  to  suppose  they  would  act  in  that  manner. 
Your  cause  will  soon  come  into  honor ;  the  restoration  of 
long-lost  rights  will  convert  popular  apathy  into  popular 
favor,  and  in  their  enthusiasm  the  people  will  forget  that 
there  are  such  things  as  erroneous  teachers  and  neglect  of 
disci])line.  Do  I  therefore  dread  your  success,  or  stand 
aloof  from  you,  on  the  ground  mentioned  ?  Assuredly  not. 
The  truth  is,  that  I  think  I  may  be  of  more  service  to  you 
by  declining  to  be  in  your  council.  I  have  only  to  say, 
therefore,  Go  on  and  jjrosper;  though  your  beginnings  have 
been  but  small,  may  your  latter  end  greatly  increase.  You 
hftve  my  best  wishes  and  prayers."  These  surely  are  the 
sentiments  of  a  man  who,  to  employ  the  striking  figure  of 
Burns,  held  a  patent  of  nobility  direct  from  Deity  himself, 
and  who  had  trained  and  cultivated  his  heart  as  sedulously 
and  successfully  as  his  head. 

He  published,  in  the  May  of  the  same  year,  his  now 
well-known  but  at  the  time  neglected  pamphlet,  "What 
ought  the  General  Assembly  to  do  at  the  present  Crisis?" 
It  had  one  great  defect  —  it  wanted  the  author's  name; 
and  told,  in  consequence,  with  less  power  on  the  body 
for  whose  benefit  it  was  chiefly  intended.  But  in  none 
of  all  the  Doctor's  writings  is  his  wonderful  sagacity 
more  clearly  and  unequivocally  shown,  and  there  are 
none  of  them  on  which  subsequent  events  have  read  a 
more  striking  comment.  His  advice  to  the  Assembly 
forms  an  emphatic  reply  to  the  query  in  the  title  :  "  With- 
out DELAY    PETITION    THE    LEGISLATURE    FOR    THE    ABOLI- 

TiGJS"  OF  PATRONAGE."     But  hc  neither  did  anticipate,  nor 

12 


134  DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE. 

could  have  anticipated,  the  present  position  of  the  Church  ; 
for  to  have  done  so  would  have  required  not  simply  human 
sagacity,  but  a  superhuman  prescience.  "No  meaning," 
says  Pope,  "  puzzles  more  than  wit."  "  It  is  almost  impos- 
sible," says  Robertson,  "to  form  any  satisfactory  conjecture 
concerning  the  motives  which  influence  capricious  and 
irregular  minds."  No  one  could  have  presaged  more 
justly  than  Dr.  -M'Crie  the  manner  in  which  the  Court  of 
Session  would  have  decided  any  ecclesiastical  case  accord- 
ing to  law ;  but  it  was  not  in  the  nature  of  things  that  he 
could  have  presaged  the  manner  in  which  the  court  was  to 
decide  ecclesiastical  cases  contrary  to  law.  There  was  no 
clew  to  surmise,  no  guide  to  conjecture.  One  of  the  first 
principles  laid  down  in  his  profound  and  masterly  pam- 
phlet— a  principle  from  which  he  deduces  the  necessity  of 
a  popular  check  in  tluB  appointment  of  ministers  —  must 
have  as  effectually  prevented  him  from  premising  the 
possibility  of  such  interdicts  as  have  been  granted  to  the 
suspended  functionaries  of  Strathbogie  or  the  rejected 
licentiate  of  Lethendy,  as  it  ought  to  have  stood  in  the 
way  of  the  court  itself  in  rendering  them  possible.  "Ac- 
cording to  law,"  says  the  Doctor,  "there  lies  no  appeal 
from  the  decisions  of  a  church  court  to  any  civil  tribunal, 
not  to  the  Parliament  itself,  in  any  case  properly  ecclesias- 
tical. Everything  of  this  kind  is  finally  settled  by  the 
decision  of  the  General  Assembly,  which,  in  addition  to  its 
judicial  and  executive  power,  claims  a  legislative  authority, 
or  at  least  a  power  of  making  authoritative  acts,  and,  with 
the  concurrence  of  a  majority  of  Presbyteries,  of  enacting 
standing  laws  which  are  binding  on  all  the  members  of 
the  Church,  laity  as  well  as  clergy."  The  decision  of  the 
historian  of  Knox  and  Melville  in  a  question  of  this  kind 
bears  a  very  different  sort  of  value  from  that  of  the  Dean 
of  Faculty  or  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  Mark,  too,  the 
shrewdness  of  his  conclusion  regarding  the  more  thorough- 
going Voluntaries:  "You  will  not  find  one  of  them 
taking  part  in  a  society  for  promoting  church    reform; 


135 

you  will  not  see  one  of  their  names  at  a  petition  for 
abolishing  patronage.  They  affect  to  laugh  at  such 
attempts  to  reform  minor  abuses,  although,  in  fact,  they 
dread  them  more  than  the  most  able  and  elaborate  vindi- 
cation of  ecclesiastical  establishments." 


CONCLUDING  ARTICLE. 

We  passed  a  Sabbath  in  Edinburgh  early  in  1835,  —  the 
first  after  a  lapse  of  nearly  ten  years,  —  and  sought  out  the 
well-known  chapel  of  our  favorite  preacher.  There  was  no 
change  there;  the  same  people  seemed  to  occupy  the 
same  pews  ;  but  so  marked  was  the  change  in  the  appear- 
ance of  the  Doctor,  that  at  first  we  scarce  recognized  him. 
"Can  it  be  thought,"  says  a  living  writer,  "that  the  human 
soul,  so  nobly  impressed  by  the  hand  of  Deity,  is  but  the 
creature  of  a  passing  day,  when  a  brick  of  Thebes  or  of 
Luxor  retains,  undefaced,  its  original  stamp  for  thousands 
and  thousands  of  years?"  The  intervening  decade  had 
borne  heavily  on  the  Doctor.  He  had  lost  his.  elasticity 
of  tread,  and  his  erect  and  semi-military  bearing ;  and  the 
complexion,  darker  and  less  pale  than  formerly,  bore,  after 
slight  exertion,  an  apoplectic  flush,  that  indicated  some 
perilous  derangement  in  the  springs  of  life.  But  the  too 
apparent  decay  affected  only  the  earthy  and  material 
frame  :  the  mind  retained  all  its  original  vigor.  We  have 
never  listened  to  the  Doctor  with  deeper  interest,  or  a 
more  thorough  admiration  of  his  sound  and  powerful  judg- 
ment, than  on  that  Sabbath ;  and  we  fancied,  but  it  might 
not  be  so,  that  his  manner  was  more  impressively  earnest, 
even,  than  usual, — impressive  and  earnest  as  it  always 
was,  —  and  that  he  was  "laboring  with  all  his  might,"  in 
the  belief  that  the  long  night  was  fast  closing  over  him,  in 
which  "he  could  no  longer  work."  We  stood  beside  the 
chapel-door  as  the  congregation  slowly  dismissed,  and 
took  our  last  look  of  the  Doctor,  believing  it  to  be  such, 


136  DR.  THOMAS    m'CRIE. 

as  he  entered  a  hackney  coach,  assisted  by  a  friend.  The 
assistance  did  not  seem  necessary,  but  it  was  sedulously 
rendered. 

His  death  took  place  in  the  following  autumn.  Melanc- 
thon,  in  his  latter  days,  evinced  a  weariness  of  the  world. 
The  folly  and  villany  of  mankind,  the  littleness  of  their 
aims,  and  the  base  and  ungenerous  s})irit  in  which  they 
so  often  pursued  them,  sickened  and  disgusted  him,  and  he 
longed  earnestly  to  be  "  away  from  them,  and  at  rest." 
Cowper's  wish  was  of  a  similar  character.  The  ever-swell- 
ing rumor  of  outrage  and  wrong,  of  oppression,  cruelty, 
and  deceit,  disturbed  and  pained  his  gentle  spirit,  and  he 
longed  for  a  "lodge  in  some  vast  wilderness,"  where  he 
might  never  hear  it  more.  There  were  seasons,  towards 
the  close  of  his  life,  in  which  Dr.  M'Crie  experienced  a 
weariness  such  as  that  of  Melancthon,  a  feeling  such  as 
that  of  Cowper.  "  His  heart,"  says  his  biographer,  "  was 
greatly  alienated  from  the  world,  and  tired  of  the  troubled 
scenes  of  its  poHtics,  civil  and  ecclesiastical."  There  was 
an  impression,  too,  borne  in  upon  his  mind  that  he  was 
soon  to  be  called  away,  and  that  his  death,  like  that  of  his 
friend  Andrew  Thomson,  was  to  be  sudden.  He  felt  his 
little  remaining  strength  fast  sinking,  and  the  remarkable 
dream  to  which  we  adverted  in  an  early  article  mingled 
its  warning  with  his  waking  presentiments,  like  the  morn- 
ing dreams  described  by  Michael  Bruce  in  his  Elegy.  He 
had  seen  the  hand  beckoning  him  away,  which,  nearly 
half  a  century  before,  had  so  solemnly  devoted  him  to  the 
service  of  God.  Not  the  less,  however,  did  he  continue 
to  urge  his  labors,  to  walk  his  round  of  professional  duty, 
to  ply  his  literary  occupations,  —  fur  he  had  now  engaged 
in  a  life  of  Calvin,  —  and  to  meet  the  unceasing  demands 
made  upon  him  for  counsel  and  assistance.  He  was 
too  little  sedulous,  perhaps,  to  "keep  life's  flame  from 
wasting  by  repose;"  an  accumulation  of  toil  was  suf- 
fered to  press  on  his  health  and  spirits;  but  in  the 
benignity   of   his    disposition    he    could    not   find    heart 


13T 

to  refuse  an  application,  and  so  he  toiled  on.  "Some 
people,"  he  said,  with  reference  to  a  task  to  which  he  had 
just  submitted,  and  which  was  to  engage  him  for  a  Avhole 
week,  —  "  some  people  seem  born  to  be  beasts  of  burden." 
Kor  did  the  presentiment  of  his  approaching  dissolution 
lessen  his  interest  in  the  fortunes  of  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land. Nothing  so  delighted  him  as  any  indication  among 
her  ministers  of  a  "  disposition  to  return  to  the  good  old 
way  of  their  fathers."  The  Assembly  of  May,  1835,  ap- 
pointed a  day  of  general  fasting  — "  an  assertion,"  says 
the  Doctor's  biographer,  "  of  the  intrinsic  power  of  the 
Church  which  he  did  not  anticipate,  and  which,  remind- 
ing him  of  her  better  days,  appeared  a  token  for  good." 
*'  Will  they  venture,"  he  said,  unacquainted  with  what  the 
Assembly  had  intended,  "to  appoint  a  fast  on  their, own 
authority  ?  "  and  he  received  the  intelligence  with  Hardly 
less  surprise  than  pleasure,  that  what  he  had  been  scarce 
sanguine  enough  to  anticipate  from  them  they  had  actually 
done.  The  Doctor  had  never  held  public  worship  on  a 
king's  fast,  but  readily  and  willingly  on  this  occnsion  did 
he  join  with  the  Church.  His  resentments,  however,  were 
all  over ;  and  he  anticipated,  more  in  sorrow  than  in  anger, 
and  anticipated  justly,  that  the  Dissenters,  as  a  body, 
"would  keep  their  shops  open  and  their  churches  shut." 
«  They  did  not  use  to  do  that,"  he  said,  "  on  days  of  royal 
appointment." 

But  if  no  man  could  evince  a  deeper  interest  in  the  wel- 
fare of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  there  was  no  man,  on  the 
other  hand,  who  could  feel  more  painfully  for  what  he 
deemed  the  imprudence  of  her  ministers,  or  for  any  general 
act  on  the  part  of  her  friends,  which  compromised,  as  he 
believed,  either  her  safety  or  her  usefulness.  The  follow- 
ino-  remark  in  a  letter  to  a  friend  —  a  remark  full  of  shrewd 
meaning,  and  on  which  recent  events  have  been  reading  a 
comment  of  tremendous  emphasis  —  belongs  to  the  closing 
year  of  his  life,  and  craves  careful  study :  "  What  fools  our 
church  folks  are,  to  identify  their  cause  with  Toryism  at 

12* 


1C8  BR.  THOMAS   M'CIIIE. 

the  present  clay,  —  to  alienate  the  whigs,  and  oblige  them 
to  league  with  radicals,  —  to  give  them  an  excuse  for 
deserting  the  defence  of  the  Church  whenever  they  shall 
find  it  safe  or  iDolitically  wise  to  do  so !  Don't  you  think 
that  our  times  bear  a  great  resemblance  to  those  of  1640 
in  England,  with  the  difierence  (great  indeed),  that  there 
is  not  the  same  religious  spirit  in  Parliament  and  in  the 
public  which  existed  at  that  period?  How  a  collision 
between  the  aristocracy  and  the  commons  (not  to  speak 
of  the  monarchy)  is  to  be  avoided,  I,  do  not  see.  The 
public  mind  is  much  more  extensively  enlightened  as  to 
politics  than  it  was  in  1793;  and  it  has  got  a  power  —  a 
lever  —  which  it  did  not  then  possess.  I  have  no  doubt  I 
have  got  a  great  portion  of  the  incredulity  of  my  name- 
sake, and  would  wish  to  say  with  respect  to  public  pros- 
pects, 'Lord,  I  believe;  help  thou  my  unbelief" 

He  had  held,  as  we  have  said,  the  Assembly's  fast ;  and 
never,  it  was  remarked,  had  he  addressed  his  people  with 
more  solemn  eifect  than  on  that  occasion.  On  the  Sabbath 
after,  he  preached  twice  from  the  striking  text  in  Matthew, 
"  Whose  fan  is  in  his  hand,  and  he  will  thoroughly  purge 
his  floor,  and  gather  his  wheat  into  the  garner ;  but  he 
will  burn  up  the  chaff  with  unquenchable  fire."  At  the 
close  of  the  service  he  seated  himself  at  the  door  of  the 
vestry,  contrary  to  his  usual  practice,  "and  watched  the 
people  while  they  were  retiring,  until  they  had  all  gone 
out."  On  the  afternoon  of  the  Tuesday  following,  after 
spending  the  early  part  of  the  day  in  visiting  some  of  his 
congregation,  he  was  seized,  immediately  on  his  return 
home,  with  a  severe  pain  in  the  bowels;  and,  after  experi- 
encing an  interval  of  partial  relief,  fell  into  a  slumber,  out 
of  which  he  never  awoke.  He  continued  to  breathe  until 
the  middle  of  the  next  day ;  and  then,  surrounded  by  his 
friends,  and  by  many  of  his  beloved  flock,  who  had  col- 
lected to  witness  his  last  moments,  he  passed  to  his  reward, 
without  a  groan  or  a  struggle.  He  had  entered  the  sixty- 
third  year  of  his  age,  and  the  fortieth  of  his  ministry. 


DR.  THOMAS   m'CRIE.  139 

His  funeral  was  attended  by  nearly  fifteen  hundred  per- 
sons, including  the  magistracy  of  Edinburgh,  its  ministers 
of  all  persuasions,  the  preachers  and  students  attending  the 
halls  of  the  Establishment  and  the  United  Secession,  and 
by  a  deputation  from  the  Assembly's  Commission,  headed 
by  the  clerk  and  the  moderator.  Nor  could  his  remains 
have  found  a  more  appropriate  resting-place  than  the 
ancient  cemetery  to  which  they  were  conveyed, — the  burial 
ground  of  the  Greyfriars.  It  contains  the  dust  of  Alex- 
ander Henderson,  the  great  leader  of  the  Church  during 
the  troubles  of  the  first  Charles;  it  contains  also,  in  its 
malefactor's  corner,  the  remains  and  the  monument  of  the 
martyrs  who,  in  the  cause  of  Christ  and  of  Presbytery, 
laid  down  their  lives  in  Edinburgh  during  the  dissolute 
and  bloody  reign  of  Charles  the  Second  ;  and  for  an  entire 
twelvemonth  its  open  area  was  the  prison  in  which  the 
captive  Covenanters  of  Bothwell  Bridge  were  exposed  to 
every  inclemency  of  the  seasons,  and  to  the  mockeries  and 
revilings  of  their  fierce  and  cruel  jailers.  Nor  is  there 
any  lack  of  the  kindred  dust  once  animated  by  genius. 
There  occur  on  the  surrounding  tombs  the  names  of  Colin 
M'Laren,  of  Allan  Ramsay,  of  Hugh  Blair,  and  of  William 
Robertson.  But  the  talents  which^the  Task-Master  en- 
trusts to  his  servants,  whether  the  sum  total  cor^sists  of 
one  or  of  ten,  are  of  but  little  value,  compared  with  the 
use  to  which  they  have  been  devoted,  and  the  effects  which 
the  possessors  have  accomplished  through  their  means. 
We  have  stood  beside  the  Doctor's  grave,  and  felt,  amid 
the  deep  silence  of  the  place  where  knowledge  and  device 
faileth,  and  where  there  is  no  work  and  no  wisdom,  how 
well  and  honestly  he  had  "  occupied  "  his.  His  important 
labors  are  over ;  the  work  set  him  to  do  has  been  faith- 
fully performed.  Though  during  his  life  he  stood  apart 
from  the  Church  which  he  loved,  it  was  only  as  a  watch- 
man on  some  outer  tower,  or  like  a  sentinel  of  the  times 
of  the  persecution,  stationed  on  some  eminence  of  the 
waste,  to  warn  the  assembled  congregation  of  coming  dan- 


140  DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE. 

ger;  anrl  the  Imperishable  monuments  which  he  has  rearerl 
stand  forth  to  shed  on  the  present  the  light  of  the  past, 
and  as  beacons  which,  however  times  may  darken,  will  con- 
tinue to  mark  out  the  coarse  wdiich  churches  and  nations 
will  ultimately  find  it  their  interest  as  well  as  their  duty 
to  pursue.  A  massy  and  tasteful  monument  of  white 
stone,  erected  by  his  sorrowing  flock,  as  a  memorial  of  "  his 
w^orth  and  of  their  gratitude,"  marks  out  his  final  resting- 
place,  and  bears  an  inscription  wdiose  rare  merit  it  is  to  be 
at  once  highly  eulogistic  and  strictly  true. 

Our  sketch  has  been  miserably  imperfect  indeed  if  the 
reader  has  not  been  enabled  to  form  from  it  some  estimate, 
correct  though  not  adequate,  of  the  character  of  Dr. 
M'Crie.  His  whole  life  was  a  powerful  illustration  of  how 
much  a  superior  mind  can  be  improved  and  ennobled  by 
Christian  principle.  It  shows  also  how  necessary  integrity 
is  to  the  development  of  a  high  order  of  intellect.  Had 
the  Doctor  been  less  honest,  he  would  have  been  less  saga- 
cious also.  His  mind,  like  a  fine  instrument,  took  the 
measure  and  tendencies  of  passing  events;  and  there  w^ere 
no  disturbing  influences  of  selfishness  to  throw  their  mix- 
ture of  uncertainty  and  error  into  the  process.  His  wis- 
dom, in  part  at  least,  was  a  consequence  of  his  magnanim- 
ity. It  may  seem  a  mere  fancy  to  coujde  such  men  as  Dr. 
M'Crie  and  the  Duke  of  Wellington — the  statesman  and 
general  with  the  historian  and  divine ;  but  resembling 
minds  may  be  placed  in  very  opposite  circumstances ;  and 
for  sobriety  of  feeling,  fiir-seeing  sagacity,  great  firmness 
of  purpose,  an  impregnable  native  honesty,  uninfluenced  by 
the  small  motives  of  party,  —  in  short,  for  all  that  consti- 
tutes the  safe  and  great  leader,  —  the  standing  of  both 
men,  each  in  his  own  sphere,  refers  to  a  level  to  which  very 
ihw  attain.  Plutarch  has  parallelisms  that  lie  less  parallel. 
We  shall  just  refer,  ere  w^e  close,  to  one  or  two  detached 
points  in  the  intellectual  and  literary  character  of  Dr. 
M'Crie. 

It  was  well  remarked  by  Lord  Jeftrey,  in  his  admirable 


DR.  THOMAS   m'cRIE.  141 

review,  that  the  Life  of  Knox  "  exhibited  a  rare  union  of 
the  patient  research  and  sober  judgment  which  character- 
ize the  more  kiborious  cLass  of  historians,  with  the  boldn 


less 


of  thinkhig  and  force  of  imagination  which  are  sometimes 
substituted  in  their  place."  The  remark  strikingly  illus- 
trates a  peculiar  excellence  of  the  Doctor's  intellect.  He 
could  not  rest  on  the  surface  of  a  subject,  even  if  he  had 
wished  it.  It  was  his  nature  to  search  to  the  very  bottom, 
at  whatever  cost  of  labor,  —  to  pursue  some  obscure  fact 
through  a  hundred  different  authorities,  until  he  had  at 
length  fixed  it  down  before  him  as  one  of  the  unimpeach- 
able certainties  of  history.  The  privileged  friends  whom 
he  at  times  received  in  his  study  used  to  be  utterly  appalled 
by  the  huge  masses  of  books  and  manuscripts  which  always 
lay  piled  up  before  him  for  constant  reference ;  and  so  se- 
verely and  conscientiously  was  his  judgment  exercised  in 
every  instance,  that  on  not  so  much  as  one  of  his  state- 
ments have  even  his  abler  antagonists  succeeded  in  casting 
a  shadow  of  doubt.  Robertson  was  much  his  inferior  in 
research.  Hume,  whose  defects  in  patient  investigation 
are  now  pretty  generally  known,  was  immeasurably  so.  In 
tracing  the  history  of  opinion  and  doctrine,  where  of  neces- 
sity the  evidence  must  be  more  shadowy  and  intangible 
than  in  whatever  relates  to  conduct  or  action,  the  degree 
of  certainty  at  which  he  invariably  succeeded  in  arriving 
was  truly  wonderful.  The  whole  bearing  of  bygone  con- 
troversies, their  after-effects  on  doctrine  and  belief,  the 
degree  in  which  they  had  led  the  parties  they  had  divided 
to  modify,  retract,  restate,  —  the  influence  on  society 
of  particular  minds  and  peculiar  modes  of  thought,  —  all 
seemed  to  open  before  him  as  he  advanced,  alone  and 
unassisted,  on  his  solitary  and  laborious  course. 

His  style  and  manner  fitted  him  no  less  for  his  task  than 
his  unwearied  perseverance.  To  employ  one  of  Johnson's 
figures,  the  heat  of  his  genius  sublimed  his  learning.  It  is 
related  by  Gibbon,  that  after  he  had  formed  his  determina- 
tion of  devoting  himself  to  literature,  he  perused  the  then 


142  DR.  THOMAS   M^CRIE. 

recently  published  histories  of  Robertson  and  Hume.  The 
measured  and  stately  j^eriods  of  Robertson  delighted  him ; 
and  yet  he  could  hope,  that  with  much  jDains  and  great 
study  he  might  at  length  succeed  in  writing  such  a  style. 
But  he  read  Hume  and  despaired.  Art  might  enable  him 
to  rival  the  exquisite  art  of  the  one,  but  art  could  not 
enable  him  to  equal  the  still  more  exquisite  nature  of  the 
other.  Hume  is  one  of  the  most  readable  of  historiaus : 
he  is  invariably  unaffected,  invariably  clear.  Robertson 
palls :  we  admire  his  pages,  but  his  volumes  tire.  Xovv, 
Dr.  M'Crie  in  this  respect  resembles  Hume.  His  pages  are 
not  so  elegant  as  those  of  Robertson,  but  they  are  more 
attractive,  and  the  reader  turns  over  more  of  them  at  a 
sitting.  We  merely  peruse  the  history  of  Scotland ;  we 
devour  the  biography  of  Knox.  The  number  of  editions 
which  have  appeared  within  the  last  few  months,  since  the 
copyright  has  expired,  evinces  the  degree  of  popularity 
which  the  latter  work  is  destined  to  enjoy  in  the  future. 
The  last  we  saw  formed  a  two-shilling  volume  ;  its  price 
and  appearance  showed  that  it  was  intended  for  the  com- 
mon people;  and  we  paid  our  respects  to  it,  at  once  recog- 
nizing in  it  a  formidable  oppqnent  of  the  Earl  of  Dal- 
housie's  arguments,  the  Court  of  Session's  encroachments, 
and  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  bill. 

We  refer,  ere  we  close  our  remarks,  to  but  one  other 
trait  in  the  literary  career  of  Dr.  M'Crie.  There  is  an 
occasional  quaintness  in  some  of  his  finer  passages,  that,  to 
men  deeply  read  in  the  theology  of  the  Church's  better 
days,  constitues  an  additional  charm.  His  eloquence  is 
that  of  the  divines  of  the  Commonwealth,  rendered  clas- 
sical through  native  taste  and  the  study  of  the  better 
models.  We  submit,  as  an  example,  the  following  exqui- 
site passage:  "Who  would  be  a  slave  !  is  the  exclamation 
of  those  who  are  themselves  free,  and  sometimes  of  those 
who,  provided  they  enjoy  freedom  themselves,  care  not 
though  the  whole  world  were  in  bondage.  But  there  is  a 
sentiment  still  more  noble  than  that.     Who  would  be  a 


DR.  THOMAS   M'cRIE.  143 

slave-dealer,  a  patron,  an  advocate  for  slavery!  To  be  a 
slave  has  been  the  hard,  but  not  dishonorable,  lot  of  many 
a  good  man  and  noble  spirit.  But  to  be  a  tyrant,  —  that  is 
disgrace!  To  trample  on  the  rights  of  his  fellow-creature; 
to  treat  him,  whether  it  be  with  cruelty  or  kindness,  as 
a  dog ;  to  hold  him  in  chains,  when  he  has  perpetrated  or 
threatens  no  violence ;  to  carry  him  with  a  rope  about  his 
neck,  not  to  the  scaffold,  but  to  the  market ;  to  sell  him 
whom  God  made  after  his  own  image,  and  whom  Christ 
redeemed,  not  with  corruptible  things,  as  silver  and  gold, 
and,  by  the  act  of  transferreuce,  to  tear  him  from  his  own 
bowels, —  that  is  disgraceful!  I  protest  before  you  that  I 
would  a  thousand  times  rather  have  my  hvo^i  branded 
with  the  name  of  Slave^  than  have  written  on  the  palm  of 
my  hand  or  the  sole  of  my  foot  the  initial  letter  of  the 
word  Tyrant!'''^ 


THE    DEBATE    ON    MISSIONS. 


PART    FIRST. 


It  was  forty-five  years  last  May  (1840)  since  tlie  famous 
debate  on  missions  took  place  in  the  General  Assembly  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland.  A  race  unborn  at  the  time  have 
now  reached  the  term  of  middle  life ;  and  of  those  who 
either  joined  in  the  discussion,  or  recorded  their  votes  at 
its  close,  very  few  survive.  There  are  many  important 
facts  connected  with  the  history  of  this  memorable  debate, 
which  still  read  their  lesson  to  the  country ;  and  during 
the  present  pause  in  the  political  world,  our  readers  may 
deem  themselves  not  ill  employed  in  glancing  over  some 
of  its  more  striking  details.  It  furnishes  a  better  illustra- 
tion of  the  true  character  of  Moderatism  than  they  will 
be  able  to  find  for  themselves  almost  anywhere  else ;  and 
it  were  surely  well  they  should  all  thoroughly  know  what 
sort  of  a  religion  it  is  which  has  so  lately  challenged  for 
itself  an  exclusive  right  to  be  recognized  as  the  state 
religion  of  Scotland. 

Our  materials  are  fortunately  very  ample.  The  art  of 
the  reporter  was  but  in  its  infancy  at  the  time,  especially 
in  Scotland ;  the  contemporary  debates  of  even  the  Eng- 
lish Parliament  appear  but  as  mere  skeleton  sketches,  that 
rather  resemble  lists  of  contents  than  series  of  speeches; 
and  yet  by  a  rare  chance  there  exists  a  report  of  this  sin- 
gular debate,  as  ample  and  complete  as  any  of  the  present 
day.     Moderatism  had  its  likeness  taken  at  the  time  at 


THE    DEBATE    OX    MISSIONS.  145 

full  length,  and  in  one  of  its  worst  attitudes,  and,  as  if  to 
l^revent  all  suspicion  regarding  the  truth  of  the  picture, 
taken  apparently  not  by  an  enemy.  The  unfortunate  Rob- 
ert Heron,  the  familiar  friend  of  Burns,  and  whose  melan- 
chol}^  history  has  been  so  touchingly  recorded  by  DTsraeli 
in  his  "Calamities  of  Authors,"  lived  at  this  period  excUis- 
ively  by  his  exertions  as  an  "  author  of  all  work."  He  sat 
in  the  Assembly  during  the  debate  as  an  elder  for  Jiis 
native  burgh  of  New  Galloway ;  he  even  took  a  promi- 
nent part  in  it;  and  to  his  singularly  ready  and  masterly 
pen  can  we  alone  attribute  a  report  so  unlike,  in  its  fulness 
and  general  literary  tone,  almost  all  the  other  reports  of 
the  age.  It  may  be  well,  too,  to  mention  that,  though 
extensively  circulated  at  the  time  in  the  form  of  a  pam- 
phlet, its  faithfulness  has  never  once  been  questioned. 

It  has  been  remarked  by  Carlyle,  that  "the  history  of 
whatever  man  has  accomplished  is  at  bottom  only  the 
history  of  great  men,  leaders  of  their  brethren,  who  have 
been  the  modellers,  and,  in  a  wide  sense,  the  creators,  of 
whatsoever  the  general  mass  of  men  have  contrived  to  do." 
Certainly,  in  the  religious,  as  in  the  political  world,  we 
find  all  the  more  remarkable  events,  and  all  the  more  influ- 
ential codes  of  belief,  clustered,  if  we  may  so  express  our- 
selves, round  a  few  great  names.  The  history  of  Knox  is 
the  history  of  the  Reformation  in  Scotland  ;  the  very  name 
of  Calvin  expresses  the  religious  code  of  half  the  churches 
of  Protestantism.  Apparently  on  a  similar  principle,  we 
find  the  cause  of  general  missionary  exertion  in  this  coun- 
try connected  in  an  especial  manner  with  one  great  name. 
The  reader  of  one  of  the  most  amusing  novels  of  Scott  — 
Guy  Mannering — must  remember  that,  on  Colonel  Man- 
nering's  visit  to  Edinburgh,  the  lawyer  Pleydell  brings  him 
to  the  Greyfriars  to  hear  Principal  Robertson  preach,  and 
that,  instead  of  the  historian,  he  hears  but  the  historian's 
colleague.  Sir  Walter  had  too  often  sat  in  the  Greyfriars 
not  to  know  that  the  pulpit  ministrations  of  Robertson 
could    have   formed   no   proper    subject   of  favorable    or 

13 


146  THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIOXS. 

striking  Rescript  ion.  They  were  marked  but  by  the  dead 
inanity  inseparable  from  an  utter  lack  of  earnestness  and 
an  ignorance  of  the  gospel.  And  so  he  described,  and  in 
his  happiest  vein,  a  preacher  of  a  very  opposite  stamp.  A 
man  of  a  remarkable  thougli  somewhat  ungainly  appearance 
entered  the  pulpit.  His  pale,  fair  complexion  contrasted 
strangely  with  a  black  wig  without  a  grain  of  powder. 
"A  narrow  chest  and  a  stooping  posture,  no  gown,  not 
even  that  of  Geneva,  a  tumbled  band,  and  a  gesture  that 
seemed  scarce  voluntary,  were  the  first  circumstances  that 
struck  a  stranger."  They  were  all  forgotten,  however,  as 
the  preacher  proceeded  in  his  discourse  —  a  discourse  "in 
which  the  Calvinism  of  the  Kirk  of  Scotland  was  ably 
supported,  yet  made  the  basis  of  a  sound  system  of  prac- 
tical morals,  which  should  neitlier  shelter  the  sinner  under 
the  cloak  of  speculative  faith  or  of  peculiarity  of  opinion, 
uor  yet  leave  him  loose  to  the  waves  of  unbelief  and 
schism."  "  Something  there  was  of  an-  antiquated  turn 
of  argument  and  metaphor,"  continues  Scott,  "but  it  only 
served  to  give  zest  and  peculiarity  to  the  style  of  elocution. 
Tlie  sermon  was  not  read.  The  enunciation,  which  at  first 
seemed  imperfect  and  embarrassed,  became,  as  the  preacher 
warmed  in  his  progress,  animated  and  distinct;  and  although 
the  discourse  could  not  be  quoted  as  a  correct  specimen  of 
pulpit  eloquence,  yet  Mannering  had  seldom  heard  so  much 
learning,  metaphysical  acuteness,  and  energy  of  argument, 
brought  into  the  service  of  Christianity.  '  Such,'  he  said, 
going  out  of  the  church,  'must  have  been  the  preachers  to 
whose  unfearing  minds,  and  acute  though  sometimes  rudely 
exercised  talents,  we  owe  the  Reformation.'"  He  must 
have  been  assuredly  no  common  man  that  could  have  thus 
mollified  the  anti-evangelical  prejudices  of  Scott.  The 
preacher  described  was  Dr.  John  Erskine,  of  Edinburgh,  for 
many  years  the  revered  leader  of  the  Evangelical  party  in 
the  Church  of  Scotland. 

It  was  the  fate  of  Dr.  Erskine,  as  of  many  a  good  man 
besides,  to  contend  on  the  losing  side  all  his  life  long;  but 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  147 

he  fought  on  in  hope,  ever  animated  by  the  belief,  in  tlie 
midst  of  present  defeat  and  disaster,  that  God  himself  was 
pledged  to  the  principles  which  he  maintained,  and  that 
their  ultimate  triumph  was  secure.  He  was  the  first  man 
in  Scotland  to  raise  his  voice  against  the  war  with  the 
American  colonies,  as  alike  impolitic  and  unjust,  —  as 
opposed  in  principle  to  the  sacred  oracles,  and  as  pregnant 
with  disaster  to  the  country.  His  little  tract,  "Shall  I  go 
to  War  with  ray  American  Brethren?"  takes  its  place 
among  the  most  powerful  of  his  productions.  But  the 
warning  voice  was  unheeded;  and  so,  after  much  blood 
had  been  shed,  and  much  treasure  wasted,  the  colonies 
"Were  lost  to  Britain.  He  was  among  the  first  Scotchmen, 
too,  that  took  an  active  interest  in  the  abolition  of  slavery ; 
and  when  twitted  with  the  fact,  in  his  old  age,  by  the 
Edinburgh  lawyer  who  now  sits  on  the  bench,  he  rose, 
with  all  the  spirit  of  his  most  vigorous  days,  "  to  acknowl- 
edge, and  glory  in  the  acknowledgment,"  —  we  employ 
his  own  words,  —  "that"  he  was  "a  member  of  the  Slave 
Abolition  Society.  For  why?"  he  added:  "I  wished  to 
see  justice  done  to  cruelly  oppressed  fellow-creatures, 
dragged  reluctantly  from  one  quarter  of  the  globe  to 
another  to  satisfy  the  rapacity  of  our  countrymen,  —  men 
who  can  boast  proudly  enough  of  their  own  freedom.  I 
wished,  too,  to  see  a  stain,  the  blackest  that  can  be  con- 
ceived, wiped  away  from  the  national  character  of  Britain. 
This  I  wished, — this  is  still  my  wish;  nor  will  all  that 
the  gentlemen  opposite  can  say  prevent  me  from  effecting 
it,  so  far  as  God  has  given  me  the  power."  Dr.  Erskine 
was  long  remarkable  for  the  extent  and  expansiveness  of 
his  views  in  connection  with  the  general  interests  of 
Christianity.  They  were  not  confined  to  one  kingdom, 
nor  even  one  quarter  of  the  globe.  When  yet  a  young 
man,  his  attention  had  been  strongly  excited  by  the 
remarkable  revival  of  religion  which  had  taken  place  in 
North  America,  chiefly  in  connection  with  the  labors  of 
that  truly  eminent  Christian   and  profound   thinker,  the 


148  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

metaphysician  of  the  New  World,  President  Edwards ;  and 
in  order  to  obtain  the  earliest  and  most  extensive  religious 
intelligence  from  this  quarter,  in  the  hope  of  awakening  a 
similar  spirit  at  home,  he  had  entered  into  an  extensive 
corresj^ondence  with  the  distinguished  President  himself, 
and  several  of  his  fellow-laborers.  With  a  similar  purpose 
he  also  opened  up  a  correspondence  with  many  of  the 
more  eminent  divines  of  the  continent,  which  he  main- 
tained during  the  course  of  his  long  life.  And,  thus  stand- 
ing, like  a  prophet  of  old,  on  a  hill-top,  scarce  a  cloud  could 
arise  on  the  horizon  of  the  religious  world,  or  a  gleam  of 
sunshine  break  out  in  even  its  more  solitary  recesses,  that 
escaped  his  notice.  As  he  advanced  in  years,  his  interest 
in  the  survey  increased.  He  saw  some  great  convulsion  at 
hand,  which  was  perhaps  to  agitate  all  Europe ;  and  so 
intense  was  his  anxiety,  that,  at  a  period  of  life  when  the 
few  who  survive  so  long  deem  their  time  of  exertion  over, 
he  set  himself  sedulously  to  the  study  of  the  German 
language,  as  a  new  medium  of  knowledge,  and  actually 
mastered  its  difficulties  in  a  very  few  weeks.  We  may 
mention,  as  a  proof  of  the  unwearied  zeal  of  the  man,  that 
ev  1  at  his  death,  which  took  place  in  his  eighty-second 
yccu',  he  was  found  to  have  collected  materials  for  the 
current  number  of  his  periodical  pamphlet,  "Keligious 
Intelligence  from  Abroad." 

The  storm  which  he  had  foreseen  in  "a  cloud  like  a 
man's  hand,"  at  length  burst  out  in  all  the  horrors  of  the 
first  French  Revolution.  A  whole  nation  recognized  the 
tenets  of  atheism  as  the  moral  and  religious  code  of  its 
people,  and  pronounced  death  to  be  an  eternal  sleep.  No 
inconsiderable  portion  of  the  people  of  the  other  countries 
of  Europe  seemed  fast  treading  in  their  footsteps.  In  the 
centre  of  the  great  moral  earthquake  which  ensued,  the 
gilded  pinnacles  of  society  were  thrown  down  and  broken 
in  pieces;  blood  flowed  in  torrents;  the  whole  face  of 
things  was  fearfully  changed.  Men  who  had  had  no  pre- 
vious quarrel  with  skepticism  —  who,  like  Gibbon,  rather 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  149 

had  spent  years  of  toilsome  nights  and  laborious  days  in 
securing  its  spread  —  were  struck  aghast  to  see  it  resolve 
itself  into  its  occult  elements,  convulsion  and  murder.  Men 
who  had  held  by  a  mei*e  semblance  of  the  truth — the 
Moderates  of  all  churches  —  feared  that  the  last  days  of 
the  Christian  religion  had  at  length  come,  and  that  the 
general  gloom  betokened  its  setting.  The  popish  hierarchy 
had  fled  in  terror  of  their  lives  from  France,  routed  by 
the  Encyclopaedists  and  the  populace.  Paine  and  his 
associates  in  our  own  country,  backed  by  the  previous 
labors  of  the  bosom-friends  and  honored  correspondents 
of  Robertson  and  Blair,  had  commenced  their  ferocious 
attack  on  the  religion  of  the  Bible,  Even  to  some  not 
unacquainted  with  the  vital  energies  of  that  Christianity 
which  God  himself  has  sworn  to  maintain,  the  time  seemed 
a  time  of  defeat  and  disaster,  in  which  it  behooved  the 
cause  of  religion  to  yield,  at  least  for  a  season,  and  take 
shelter  till  the  fury  of  the  assault  might  have  spent  itself 
in  its  own  mad  exertions.  Very  different  indeed  was  the 
estimate  of  the  aged  and  venerable  leader  of  Evangelism 
in  Scotland,  The  time  might  seem  to  others  a  time  of 
inevitable  retreat;  he,  on  the  contrary,  deemed  it  a  proper 
time  for  advance.  For  nearly  sixty  years  had  he  now 
looked  forth  upon  the  long-protracted  battle,  in  which  the 
principles  of  good  and  evil  contended  for  the  mastery;  and 
it  was  this  dark  hour,  of  all  others,  that  he  deemed  fittest 
for  the  charge.  He  corresponded  with  his  friends;  he 
encouraged  them  to  action  in  the  missionary  field.  It  was 
no  time  for  them,  he  urged,  to  i«st  idly  on  their  arms. 

Nearly  a  century  previous,  a  Society  had  been  instituted 
in  Scotland  for  the  Propagation  of  Christian  Knowledge ; 
but  its  funds  had  been  at  no  time  sufficient  to  enable  it  to 
carry  its  exertions  beyond  the  limits  of  the  kingdom,  or 
even  adequately  to  supply  the  destitution  of  our  Highlands 
and  Islands,  its  more  especial  field.  At  a  middle  period 
in  the  century,  the  Moravians  of  Denmark  had  originated 
Ihose  arduous  but  singularly  successful  schemes  for   the 

13* 


150  THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

spread  of  the  gospel,  through  which  the  glad  tidings  of  s;il- 
vation  had  been  carried  to  Greenland,  the  West  Indies,  and 
many  parts  of  Africa  and  America.  A  very  few  years  pre- 
vious, some  worthy  Baptist  ministers  in  Northampton  and 
Leicestershire  had  set  the  missionary  example  to  England, 
by  originating  a  Society  for  the  Diffusion  of  the  Gospel;  the 
London  Society  had  been  established  the  year  previous  ; 
and  now,  in  the  spring  of  1796,  the  first  meeting  of  the 
Edinburgh  Missionary  Society  was  held  in  this  city,  —  the 
truly  venerable  Dr.  John  Erskine,  the  father  of  the  insti- 
tution, then  in  his  seventy-fifth  year,  in  tlifS  chair.  One  of 
the  first  acts  of  the  society  was  to  address  a  circular  to  all 
the  ministers  of  religion  in  the  country,  and  to  as  many 
private  individuals  besides  as  were  deemed  able  and  will- 
ing to  assist  in  forwarding  its  objects.  All  the  ministers 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland  were  included  in  the  list,  as  a 
matter  of  course;  the  society  urged  their  cooperation, 
and  entreated  their  prayers;  considerable  interest  was 
excited  over  the  country ;  the  matter  was  discussed  in 
synods  and  presbyteries  ;  and  the  immediate  result  at  this 
stage,  in  connection  with  the  Church,  was  the  transmission 
of  two  overtures  to  the  General  Assembly  of  the  current 
year,  recommendatory  of  a  favorable  consideration  of  the 
missionary  scheme,  —  one  from  the  Synod  of  Moray,  the 
other  from  the  Synod  of  Fife.  The  General  Assembly 
met,  and  in  arranging  the  order  of  business,  the  27th  day 
of  May  was  fixed  for  its  deliberations  on  the  overtures  on 
missions. 

The  generally  recognized  leaders  of  the  two  parties  had 
been  returned  members  of  the  Assembly  —  Dr.  John  Ers- 
kine, now,  as  we  have  said,  in  his  seventy-sixth  year,  and 
Dr.  George  Hill,  of  St.  Andrews,  a  man  then  in  the  prime 
of  life.  To  the  character  of  the  first  we  have  already 
introduced  our  readers,  —  an  introduction  unnecessary,  we 
have  little  doubt,  in  the  case  of  by  far  the  greater  number 
of  them ;  that  of  the  latter  is  also  pretty  generally  known, 
but  certainly  much  more  variously  estimated.    "  The  boy," 


THE   DEBATE   OX   MISSIONS.  IGl 

says  Wordswortli,  "  is  father  to  the  man."  We  find  the 
embryo  Moderate  leader,  when  yet  a  hid  of  eighteen,  and 
at  a  time  when  Chesterfield  was  deemed  a  profound  mor- 
alist, writing  thus  to  his  mother  from  London  :  "I  am  sure 
I  am  pliable  enough,  —  more  than  I  think  sornetimes  quite 
right.  I  can  laugh  or  be  grave,  talk  nonsense  on  i:)olitics 
or  philosophy,  Ji^5^  as  it  suits  my  company^  and  can  submit 
to  any  mortification  to  please  those  with  whom  I  converse. 
I  cannot  flatter;  but  I  can  listen  with  attention,  and  seem 
pleased  with  eveiy thing  that  anybody  says.  By  arts  like 
these,  ichich  have  perhaps  a  little  meanness  in  them.,  but 
are  so  convenient  that  one  does  not  choose  to  lay  them 
aside.,  I  have  had  the  good  luck  to  be  a  favorite  in  most 
places."  "  In  the  general  scramble  for  the  good  things  of 
this  world,"  says  one  of  the  Doctor's  biographers,  "  had 
such  a  man  failed,  who  could  ever  hope  to  succeed?" 
George  Hill  did  not  fail.  He  was  unlucky  in  one  instance, 
in  one  of  his  patrons,  through  whose  influence  he  might 
have  risen  high  in  the  English  Church;  but,  ere  he  had 
made  up  his  mind  to  enter  into  orders  in  the  more  aristo- 
cratic Establishment,  with  a  prospect  of  preferment  supe- 
rior to  anything  which  Presbyterianism  can  offer,  —  a 
course  much  urged  on  him  by  his  friends,  —  his  patron 
unluckily  died.  Still,  however,  Presbytery  has  its  good 
things  also;  at  least,  half  a  dozen  of  its  tolerably  good 
things  make  a  very  good  thing  when  united  ;  and  both  in 
practice  and  theory  Hill  was  a  pluralist.  He  made  speeches 
in  the  Speculative  Club  in  praise  of  the  aristocracy,  by 
which  he  acquired  very  considerable  eclat.  To  favor  a 
political  friend,  he  became  the  holder  of  a  paper  vote  in 
Xairnshire,  which,  under  the  dread  of  being  possibly  sub- 
jected to  a  prosecution  for  perjury,  he  again  relinquished, 
after  having  once  exercised  the  privilege  which  it  con- 
ferred. In  his  twenty-second  year  he  became  Professor 
of  Greek  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews  ;  he  had  been 
offered  by  the  Eai'l  of  Haddington  of  those  days  the  ])arish 
of  Coldstream ;  but  with  prospects  such  as  his,  a  country 


152  THE   DEBATE   ON  MISSIONS. 

l^arish  seemed  a  somewhat  inconsiderable  matter ;  and  the 
result  justified  his  prudence;  for  ere  his  thirtieth  year  he 
had  united  to  his  Greek  professorship  the  second  parochial 
charge  of  St.  Andrews.  A  few  years  after,  he  became 
Professor  of  Divinity,  and,  in  addition,  Principal  of  the 
University.  He  was  next  nominated  one  of  his  Majesty's 
chaplains  for  Scotland ;  next,  one  of  the  deans  of  the  Chapel 
Royal ;  and  to  all  these  profitable  oflices  was  superadded 
the  merely  honorary  ofHce  of  dean  to  the  Order  of  the 
Thistle.  If  an  aggregation  of  offices  lead  to  an  aggregated 
amount  of  character,  never,  surely,  had  church  party  a 
more  honorable  leader  than  the  opponent  of  Dr.  Erskine. 
One  of  the  ministers  of  St.  Andrews,  its  Professor  of  The- 
ology, the  Principal  of  its  University,  one  of  his  Majesty's 
chaplains  for  Scotland,  one  of  the  deans  of  the  Chapel 
Royal,  and,  finally,  the  dean  of  the  Order  of  the  Thistle, 
all  walked  into  the  General  Assembly  in  the  person  of  Dr. 
Hill. 

Of  the  character  of  his  measures  as  a  public  man  it  is 
not  difficult  at  this  time  of  day  to  form  a  correct  estimate. 
They  are  now  matters  of  history;  and  the  experience  of 
half  a  century  has  read  its  comment  on  the  miserable  nar- 
rowness of  the  policy  by  which  they  were  dictated.  "  Fred- 
erick of  Prussia,"  says  Byron,  "  ran  away  from  both  the 
first  and  the  last  of  his  fields."  Nearly  the  same  thing 
may  be  said  of  Dr.  Hill.  He  broke  down  as  a  leader  in 
both  his  earlier  and  his  concluding  attempts.  Though 
much  superior  as  a  theologian  to  Dr.  Robertson,  and  appa- 
rently much  more  sincere  in  his  beliefs,  he  was  by  many 
degrees  a  less  prudent  man.  If  the  historian  succeeded  in 
prostrating  the  spirit  of  Presbytery,  he  deemed  the  achieve- 
ment sufficient:  its  skeleton  forms  he  suffered  to  remain. 
It  was  enough  for  him  that  he  enveloped  these  in  an  atmos- 
phere of  death :  there  were  risks  connected  with  their 
removal  which  he  was  too  wary  and  too  far-seeing  to  run. 
He  strenuously  resisted,  for  instance,  every  attempt  to  set 
aside  the   Confession  of  Faith  ;  he  peruiitted  the  Call  to 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  153 

survive  in  all  its  original  integrity  of  form,  deeming  it  suf- 
ficient that  in  practice  he  had  reduced  it  to  a  dead  letter ; 
and  during  the  whole  of  his  reign  —  the  most  absolute, 
perhaps,  of  any  ecclesiastical  leader  —  he  allowed  the 
Assembly,  w^ithout  challenge,  to  raise  every  year  its  appeal 
to  the  Legislature  against  patronage.  Dr.  Hill,  as  we  have 
said,  was  less  prudent.  Almost  his  first  legislative  attempt 
was  an  attempt  to  abolish  the  Call.  The  measure,  how- 
ever, though  strenuously  defended  by  Dr.  Cook,  in  his 
biography,  was  regarded  as  too  extreme  by  some  of  the 
more  wary,  and  with  these  also  by  not  a  few,  we  may  trust, 
of  the  better  disposed  Moderates.  By  the  union  of  these 
with  the  Evangelical  minority  the  design  was  defeated, 
and  the  Church  was  •  thus  spared  the  signal  disgrace  of 
destroying  by  her  own  act  one  of  the  most  important,  and, 
surely,  not  the  least  sacred,  of  her  liberties.  He  was  again 
defeated  still  more  signally,  at  a  much  later  period,  in  his 
defence  of  the  imposition  of  the  miserably  profane  Test 
Act  on  members  of  the  Established  Church  of  Scotland. 
He  deemed  it  no  hardship,  he  said,  for  Presbyterians  of 
liberal  and  enlightened  minds  to  partake  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  according  to  the  mode  sanctioned  by  the  sister 
church.  He  did  not  add  that,  regarded  as  a  prelude  to 
office,  it  could  scarce  be  deemed  other  than  a  very  agree- 
able ceremony  indeed.  But  the  majority  of  the  Church 
thought  differently,  and  so  Dr.  Hill  was  defeated.  Unfor- 
tunately, however,  for  the  character  of  his  party,  there 
were  measures  in  which  he  was  entirely  successful.  It  was 
on  a  motion  made  by  Dr.  Hill,  in  the  General  Assembly  of 
1784,  that  the  appeal  against  patronage  to  the  Government 
of  the  country,  which,  year  after  year,  from  the  times  of 
Lord  President  Dun  das,  had  been  raised  by  the  Church, 
w^as  suffered  to  drop.  He  had  the  satisfiiction,  too,  —  tliough 
w^e  doubt  whether  even  his  biographer.  Dr.  Cook,  will  now 
envy  him  the  triumph,  —  of  defeating,  on  the  question  of 
missions,  the  venerable  Dr.  Erskine  and  his  party,  and  of 
thus  branding  Moderatism,  though,  surely,  all  unwittingly, 


154  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

full  in  the  view  of  the  religious  world,  as  a  principle  essen- 
tially anti-Christian.  It  is  but  justice,  however,  to  the 
character  of  Dr.  Hill,  to  add  one  trait  more.  Very  rarely 
is  the  thorough  Moderate,  though  able  and  accomplished, 
a  profound  theologian.  His  lack  of  belief  in  the  funda- 
mental doctrines  of  theology  —  a  lack  of  belief  similar  to 
that  which  obtains  in  the  present  age  regarding  the  pecu- 
liar dogmas  of  the  Schoolmen,  and  which  prevents  any 
very  thorough  study  of  their  writings  —  lias  the  effect  of 
inducing  superficiality.  Why  spend  much  time  in  acquaint- 
ing one's  self  with  doubtful  com])lexities,  that  lead  to  no 
practical  result?  Such,  however,  was  not  the  conclusion 
of  Dr.  Hill.  His  system  of  theology  is  not  without  its 
defects.  His  exposures  of  dangerous  heresy  and  his  exhi- 
bitions of  Divine  truth  are  alike  characterized  by  a  freezing 
chill  of  sentiment.  But  superficiality  is  not  his  fault:  his 
work  is  that  of  a  masterly  theologian,  who  at  least  saw 
clearly,  though  he  could  not  feel  strongly.  We  know  not 
whether  we  are  to  seek  an  explanation  of  the  fact  in  a 
peculiarity  of  character  adverted  to  by  himself  in  one  of 
his  earlier  letters  :  "  I  am,  and  perhaps  all  my  life  shall 
continue,"  he  says,  "  a  close  student ;  but  I  hate  learning." 


PART     SECOND. 

The  debate  on  missions  opened  with  one  of  those  disin- 
genuous stratagems  on  the  part  of  the  Moderate  leader, 
which,  consorting  thoroughly  with  the  character  and  prin- 
ciples of  the  party,  have  ever  constituted  the  staple  of  its 
policy,  and  in  the  management  of  which  few  men  ever  ex- 
celled Dr.  Hill.  Trick  and  finesse  are  the  proper  weapons 
of  a  false  or  unfaithful  Church  in  a  civilized  age,  whether 
she  have  to  defend  herself  against  the  assaults  of  infidels  and 
skeptics,  whose  doctrines,  however  congenial  to  her  actual 
beliefs,  would  lead  to  the  alienation  of  her  temporalities, 
or  to  oppose  herself  a  tliousand  times  more  thoroughly  in 


THE   DEBATE    ON    MISSIONS.  155 

earnest  to  the  exertions  of  a  very  different  class,  animated 
by  a  desire  of  heightening  her  character  and  correctino-  her 
errors. 

There  were,  as  we  have  said,  two  overtures  recommen- 
datory of  the  missionary  sclieme  before  the  Assembly,  — 
one  from  the  Synod  of  Moray,  the  other  from  the  Synod 
of  Fife.  The  Fife  overture  was  of  a  general,  though  at 
the  same  time  sufficiently  definite  character:  it  merely 
urged  on  the  Assembly  the  consideration  of  the  most 
effectual  methods  by  which  the  Church  of  Scotland  might 
be  made  to  contribute  to  the  diffusion  of  the  gospel  over 
the  world.  The  Moray  overture  was  more  particular  in 
what  it  recommended.  Taking  it  somewhat  too  readily 
for  granted  that  the  course  advised  by  the  other  overture 
the  Assembly  was  already  prepared  to  pursue,  it  went  a 
step  further,  and  earnestly  urged  the  passing  of  an  act 
recommendatory  of  a  general  collection  in  aid  of  the  mis- 
sionary scheme  throughout  the  various  parishes  of  Scot- 
land. Both  the  leaders  of  the  Assembly  were  shrewd  and 
far-seeing  men,  and  both  inthnately  acquainted  with  the 
nature  of  the  materials  on  which  they  had  to  operate. 
They  alike  saw  that  the  Fife  overture,  if  considered  alone, 
and  on  its  own  merits,  might  very  possibly  pass  into  a  law, 
which,  however  inoperative,  would  at  least  recognize  the 
excellence  of  missionary  exertion ;  they  alike  saw  that  the 
prevailing  Moderatism  of  the  Assembly  would  be  at  once 
roused  to  oppose  the  Moray  overture,  and  that  there  was 
no  chance  whatever  of  its  passing.  The  great  object  of 
Dr.  Hill  was  to  defeat  both,  and  so  get  rid  of  the  trouble- 
some subject  of  missions  altogether.  The  great  object  of 
Dr.  Erskine  was  to  get  all  passed  in  their  fivor  that  could 
possibly  pass.  Dr.  Hill  urged,  therefore,  that  the  overtures 
should  be  considered  conjunctly.  If  he  but  succeeded  in 
getting  what  he  already  deemed  the  dead  tied  about  the 
neck  of  the  living,  he  was  secure,  as  he  too  justly  augured, 
of  soon  seeing  them  both  equally  dead.  Dr.  Erskine  con- 
tended, on   the   contrary,  that  they  should  be  considered 


156  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

separately.  Tlie  one,  he  argued,  was  "  of  a  general^  the 
other  of  a  specific  nature  ;  and  general  ^propositions  often 
command  united  assent,  though  men  may  differ  widely 
regarding  the  time  and  manner  of  applying  them  to  prac- 
tice." But  in  deliberative  assemblies,  arguments  fail  when 
they  have  to  contend  with  votes ;  and  it  was  carried,  on 
the  motion  of  Dr.  Hill,  that  the  overtures  should  be  con- 
sidered, not  separately,  as  became  their  character,  but 
conjunctly,  as  consorted  best  with  his  own  invidious 
policy.  The  preliminary  motion  virtually  decided  the 
fate  of  the  whole  discussion  ;  but  Evangelism  fought  on. 

One  of  the  first  speakers  in  the  debate  was  the  Rev.  Mr. 
M'Bean,  of  Alves  —  a  worthy  north  country  clergyman, 
uncle,  we  believe,  of  the  present  excellent  minister  of  Forres. 
The  good  man  had  come  froui  a  remote  rural  district,  in 
which  he  had  been  studying  his  Bible,  and  sedulously  walk- 
ing, in  conformity  with  its  injunctions,  his  useful  round  of 
duty ;  and  in  rising  to  support  the  Moray  overture,  it  does 
not  seem  to  have  once  entered  his  mind  that  there  were  two 
courses  of  conduct  open  regarding  it.  "  The  propagation 
of  the  glorious  gospel  of  Jesus  Christ!" — Had  they  not  all 
been  praying  for  it  all  their  lives  long?  and  was  it  not  their 
duty  to  work  as  well  as  to  pray  —  their  duty,  and  not  the  less 
surely  their  high  privilege  and  honor,  that  in  this  matter 
they  could  be  fellow-workers  with  God?  "Thy  kingdom 
come."  What  Christian  man  could  look  forth  without 
compassion  on  that  vast  portion  of  the  earth  which  was 
still  a  region  of  thick  darkness  and  horrid  cruelty,  and  in 
which  poor  perishing  fellow-creatures,  born  to  immortality, 
enjoyed  no  opportunity  of  embracing  the  blessed  gosi)el  ? 
And  then,  how  great  w«s  their  encouragement !  Did  not 
prophecy  point  their  faith  to  a  period  when  the  knowledge 
of  the  Lord  would  be  everywhere —  all  around  and  over 
this  wide  world,  like  the  waters  of  a  shoreless  ocean?  and 
should  not  they,  strengthened  by  a  hope  so  certain,  be  now 
up  and  doing,  —  using  their  every  endeavor  to  hasten  the 
happy  time,  —  working,  as  well  as  praying,  that  the  king^ 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  15T 

dom  of  grace  might  be  advanced,  and  the  kingdom  of 
glory  hastened  ?  The  good  man  sat  down,  and  was  suc- 
ceeded by  another  speaker  on  the  same  side  —  the  truly 
venerable  Dr.  Johnston,  of  North  Leith. 

It  is  scarce  necessary  that  we  advert  to  the  character  of 
this  man.  We  stood  not  long  ago  in  a  humble  domicile  in 
Leith,  before  a  rudely  framed  print  of  Dr.  Johnston  :  it 
had  been  taken  in  his  extreme  age.  The  strongly  marked 
and  somewhat  harsh  features  bore  evidence  to  the  ravages 
of  time  ;  but  the  course  of  years  had  worn  into  them  the 
expression  of  his  habitual  mood,  in  characters  which  it  was 
impossible  to  misinterpret,  and  the  effect  was  something 
more  powerful  than  beauty.  Never  have  we  seen  thought- 
ful seriousness  united  to  habitual  benevolence  more  legibly 
impressed.  "  O,  sir,"  said  the  inmate  of  the  humble  domi- 
cile, an  aged  woman,  as  she  pointed  to  the  print,  —  "O,  sir, 
there  were  few  like  him.  For  many,  many  a  year  have  I 
heard  the  precious  gospel  from  those  earnest,  blessed  lips." 
Dr.  Johnston  was  one  of  the  truly  excellent  of  the  earth. 
He  rose  on  this  occasion  to  signify  his  hearty  approval  of  the 
two  overtures  on  the  table,  but  with  evidently  less  confi- 
dence of  success  than  was  entertained  by  the  north  country 
minister;  for  he  knew  better  than  he  the  character  of  the 
party  ranged  on  the  opposite  benches.  In  running  over 
nearly  the  same  line  of  argument,  his  fears  were  ever  and 
anon  breaking  out.  "Surely,"  he  said,  "however  much 
they  might  diifer  from  one  another  in  matters  of  civil  or 
ecclesiastical  polity,  they  could  not  be  other  than  united 
in  whatever  tended  to  promote  the  kingdom  of  their 
blessed  Lord  and  Master!"  What  if  he,  in  whose  pres- 
ence and  in  whose  name  they  sat,  and  to  whom  one  day 
they  would  have  all  to  render  their  final  account,  was  now 
waiting  among  them  for  some  marked  expression  of  their 
sincerity  in  his  cause !  Was  the  General  Assembly  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland  to  declare  against  both  him  and 
it,  by  thwarting  the  means  of  promoting  it?  Means  must 
be  used ;  they  are  the  instruments  by  which  God  works. 

14 


158  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

The  advance  of  his  kingdom  among  the  heathen  was  the 
subject  of  their  daily  prayers,  but  it  would  not  do  to  say, 
"Be  ye  warmed  and  clothed — be  ye  enlightened,  reformed, 
and  saved,"  without  doing  something  more.  They  were 
called  on  to  act  as  well  as  pray.  Thousands,  bound  by 
only  their  common  Christianity,  were  stepping  forward  to 
promote  the  missionary  cause;  their  heathen  brethren  lay 
in  their  blood  :  would  they,  the  Church  of  Scotland,  pass 
by,  like  the  Levite,  on  the  other  side  ?  Paul  reckoned 
himself  "  a  debtor  to  the  Greek  and  the  barbarian."  Did 
Scotland  lie  under  no  such  debt?  The  fact  that  they 
themselves  had  been  called  from  heathen  darkness  by 
missionary  exertion  in  the  remote  past,  had  given  a  direct 
claim  upon  them  to  the  perishing  heathen  of  all  time.  Dr. 
Johnston  ceased,  and  there  rose  a  speaker  on  the  Moderate 
side. 

'  He  was  a  tall,  handsome  man,  in  the  prime  of  early 
manhood,  fashionably  dressed,  and  evidently  a  layman. 
Strange  to  relate,  he  rose,  not  to  oppose,  but  strenuously 
to  advocate  the  missionary  cause.  It  is  recorded  in  the 
biography  of  the  Rev.  Thomas  Scott,  that,  when  a  thought- 
less young  man,  he  was  severely  reprimanded  for  some 
piece  of  wickedness  by  his  master,  —  a  person  of  no  reli- 
gion, and  who  pretended  to  none,  —  and  that  from  this 
very  circumstance  the  reprimand  struck  him  more  deeply 
than  any  that  had  ever  been  dealt  him.  Moderatism  on 
the  present  occasion  received  a  similar  rebuke. 

Robert  Heron,  a  name  introduced  into  one  of  the  minor 
poems  of  Burns,^  in  a  manner  that  too  effectually  precludes 
all  idea  of  his  having  been  a  man  of  serious  religion,  was 
one  of  the  many  who  seem  born  to  illustrate  the  important 
truth,  that  without  prudence  and  conduct  there  is  no  real 
value  in  talent  or  learning,  and  no  virtue  in  genius.  He 
was  the  son  of  a  poor  weaver;  and  in  studying  for  the 
Church  —  for  he  had  unluckily  seen  no  other  mode  of  rising 
from  his  miserably  depressed  level  —  he  had  struggled  hard 

1  Epistle  to  Dr.  Blacklock. 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  159 

with  all  the  difficulties  and  hardships  incidental  to  extreme 
poverty  and  an  utter  lack  of  friends.  At  the  early  age  of 
eleven,  he  had  both  to  support  and  educate  himself,  by 
mingling  with  his  studies  the  labors  of  teaching.  He 
fought  his  onward  way  bravely.  In  addition  to  his  other 
acquirements,  he  completely  mastered  in  his  leisure  hours 
the  French  language,  attained  to  a  thorough  command  of 
English,  acquainted  himself  with  general  literature,  wrote 
verses  and  essays;  and,  on  removing  to  Edinburgh  to  at- 
tend the  classes  at  college,  he  found  means  of  introducing 
himself  to  the  booksellers  of  the  place,  and  of  so  impress- 
ing them  with  ideas  of  the  force  and  versatility  of  his  tal- 
ents, that  they  furnished  him  with  instant  employment.  He 
wrote  translations  by  the  score ;  produced  original  works, 
critical,  historical,  topographical,  which,  though  now  forgot- 
ten, were  favorably  received  in  their  day.  He  delivered 
lectures  on  the  law  of  nature  and  of  nations,  on  subjects 
of  taste  and  questions  of  science ;  and  in  the  keen  thirst 
of  literary  fame,  and  possessed  of  an  iron  constitution, 
which  his  sixteen  hours  a  day  employment  failed  for  years 
sensibly  to  affect,  he  gave  up  his  first-cherished  hopes  of  a 
competency  in  connection  wdth  the  Church,  and  devoted 
himself  to  literature  exclusively.  Rarely  is  the  life  of  the 
literary  aspirant  a  happy  one ;  very  rarely,  except  in  the 
few  cases  in  which  religion  exerts  its  influence  over  the 
whole  conduct,  is  it  even  a  comparatively  innocent  one. 
The  literary  man  of  the  last  century,  too,  was  almost 
always  an  eccentric,  unsettled  being,  ill-hafted  in  society, 
and  licensed  beyond  his  contemporaries  by  well-nigh  gen- 
eral consent.  Heron  too  soon  acquired  the  character  of 
his  class.  Periods  of  intense  study  were  succeeded  by  occa- 
sional fits  of  dissipation.  He  was  ambitious,  too,  of  being 
deemed  rather  a  gentleman  than  a  man  of  literature, — 
no  uncommon  weakness  among  literary  men,  —  and  affected 
a  fashionable  style  of  living,  which,  joined  to  his  unsettled 
habits,  had  soon  the  effect  of  placing  him  in  great  difficul- 
ties and  distress.     It  is  a  melancholy  fact,  that  no  inconsid- 


160  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

erable  portion  of  his  History  of  Scotland  was  written  in 
jail.  And  yet,  in  the  midst  of  his  sore  straits  and  signal 
imprudence,  this  unfortunate  man  of  genius  continued  to 
cherish  warm  aftections,  and  a  conscience  tenderly  alive, 
even  with  reference  to  the  religious  standard,  to  the  true 
nature  of  his  own  aberrations.  We  find  him  on  one  occa- 
sion thus  writing  to  his  poor  parents  :  —  "I  hope,  by  living- 
more  piously  and  carefully,  by  managing  my  income  fru- 
gally, and  appropriating  a  part  of  it  to  the  service  of  you 
and  my  sisters,  to  reconcile  your  affections  more  entirely  to 
me,  and  give  you  more  comfort  than  I  have  yet  done.  O, 
forget  and  forgive  my  follies  ;  look  on  me  as  a  son  who  will 
anxiously  strive  to  comfort  and  i3lease  you,  and,  after  all 
your  misfortunes,  to  render  the  evening  of  your  days  as 
happy  as  possible."  In  another  letter  we  find  him  thus 
speaking  of  his  sisters:  —  "We  must  endeavor  to  settle 
our  dear  Grace  comfortably  in  life,  and  to  educate  our  dear 
little  Betty  and  Mary  aright."  He  brought  a  younger 
brother,  a  lad  of  j^romising  talents,  with  him  to  Edinburgh, 
and  supported  him  at  college  ;  but  he  saw  him  sink  into  an 
early  grave,  a  victim  to  consumption.  He  then  brought  a 
favorite  sister  to  live  with  him.  The  seeds  of  the  same 
insidious  disease  were  fixed  in  her  constitution  also,  and 
she  too  sank  into  the  grave.  For  a  considerable  period 
his  mind  seemed  almost  unhinged  by  this  latter  shock :  he 
quitted  Edinburgh,  and  forgot  his  griefs  for  a  time  in  a 
round  of  unceasing  literary  occupation  in  London.  For 
several  years  he  employed  his  pen  in  the  service  of  the 
English  publishers,  and  this  much  more  profitably  than  he 
had  ever  been  able  to  do  in  Scotland;  but  his  unsettled 
habits  still  clung  by  hirn,  and  kept  him  poor.  His  originally 
excellent  constitution  at  length  broke  suddenly  down, 
undermined  by  his  arduous  and  long-protracted  labors,  ill 
relieved  by  life-wearing  fits  of  dissipation ;  and  he  again 
became  the  inmate  of  a  jail.  And  here,  in  the  midst  of 
squalor  and  distress,  enfeebled  in  body,  and  with  a  mind 
bowed  down  by  want  and  despair,  he  could  yet  derive  a 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  161 

glimmering  of  comfort  from  the  fact  that  he  had  never 
employed  his  pen  against  religion.  He  was  now  on  the 
confines  of  the  eternal  world,  for  he  quitted  his  place  of 
confinement  only  to  die  in  a  hospital.  Who  that  is  "him- 
self a  sinner "  shall  venture  to  say  that  the  mercy  which 
found  the  penitent  publican  and  the  penitent  thief  did  not 
visit  his  neglected  death-bed,  on  which,  alas!  there  was 
not  a  human  friend  to  look  ?  Be  that  as  it  may,  it  is  at 
least  justice  to  record,  that  in  the  memorable  debate  on 
missions  Robert  Heron  originated  the  motion  which  Dr. 
John  Erskine  was  well  content  to  second. 

His  speech  was  characterized  by  clear  good  sense,  with 
no  assumption  —  for  in  his  case  the  assumption  could 
not  have  been  other  than  offensive  —  of  the  devotional 
tone.  It  was  a  demonstrable  truth,  he  said,  that  Chris- 
tianity had  a  happy  influence  on  society;  that  it  con- 
tributed to  the  temporal  prosperity  of  states  no  less  than 
to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  individuals.  They  had  seen  it 
gradually  ameliorating  the  condition  of  the  lower  orders 
of  society;  it  had  extirpated,  for  instance,  the  domestic 
slavery  of  Europe,  and  taken  its  place  in  the  very  van  of 
civilization,  as  the  pioneer  of  improvement,  whether  intel- 
lectual or  moral.  If  a  spirit  for  its  diffusion  had  now  gone 
abroad,  regulated  by  moderation  and  prudence,  and  if 
there  existed  at  the  same  time  circumstances  more  favor- 
able for  giving  that  spirit  effect  than  at  any  former  period, 
—  and  he  was  prepared  to  show  that  that  spirit  had  gone 
abroad,  and  that  these  circumstances  did  exist,  —  he  really 
did  not  see  that  in  the  General  Assembly  of  the  Church 
of  Scotland  there  could  be  any  ground  for  difference  of 
opinion  on  the  subject.  As  for  favorable  circumstances, 
the  extensive  commerce  of  the  country,  and  the  consequent 
vastness  of  its  naval  resources,  might  be  rationally  re- 
garded as  just  the  proper  wings  of  missionary  exertion. 
The  country  stood,  too,  on  a  high  table-land  of  science 
and  general  knowledge,  which  could  surely  be  made  avail- 
able in  favorably  impressing,  f  u*  the  best  of  purposes,  the 


162  THE   DEBATE    OX   MISSIONS. 

ignorant  natives  of  barbarous  or  semi-barbarous  lanJs.  As 
for  the  missionary  spirit  which  had  been  awakened,  could 
there  possibly  be  a  more  gratifying  or  joyful  circumstance 
to  men  who  had  been  long  complaining  of  the  progress  of 
infidelity,  and  the  consequent  alarming  decay  of  religion 
and  good  morals  ?  It  was  a  direct  test  of  the  vigor  of 
religious  feeling  among  them,  and  an  evidence  that  infi- 
delity was  not  destined  to  prevail.  It  was  surely  a  good 
spirit.  If  Christianity  be  an  excellent  thing  in  itself,  it  is 
an  excellent  thing  also  to  spread  it  widely..  Prophecy 
points  to  a  time  in  which,  from  the  rising  to  the  setting 
sun,  the  Gentile  nations  shall  become  willing  subjects  of 
the  Redeemer's  kingdom.  He  doubted  not  that  the  diffu- 
sion of  a  very  general  missionary  spirit  would  be  one  of 
the  means  through  wliich  so  desirable  a  result  was  to  be 
produced ;  and  who  knew  whether  they  might  not,  at  that 
very  time,  be  witnessing  its  first  awakenings?  At  all 
events,  he  said,  he  could  not  avoid  thinking  that  such  a 
spirit  should  be  encouraged,  awake  when  it  might,  and 
that  the  only  way  for  directing  it  well  was  just  for  men  of 
character  and  abilities  to  take  an  active  part  in  the  exer- 
tions to  which  it  led.  The  Church  of  Scotland  had  been 
complimented  by  a  late  distinguished  philosopher,  David 
Hume,  as  more  favorable  to  the  cause  of  deism  than  any 
other  religious  establishment.  Now  was  the  time  for  them 
to  prove  to  the  world  that  the  compliment  was  undeserved, 
by  zealously  countenancing  and  assisting  the  honest  en- 
deavors of  their  fellow  Christians  throughout  the  country. 
Otherwise  he  did  not  see  how  the  clergy  could  expatiate 
with  a  good  grace  on  the  genei-al  indifference  about 
religion,  if  they  themselves  set  so  palpable  an  example  of 
that  very  indifferency.  He  concluded,  however,  by  mov- 
ing, not  that  they  should  immediately  adopt  either  of  the 
overtures,  but  that  they  should  appoint  a  committee  for 
taking  the  subject  of  them  into  serious  consideration,  and 
on  whose  report  the  Assembly  might  afterwards  act.  A 
matter  tliat  promised  so  fair  was  at  least  worthy  of  exam- 


THE    DEBATE    0:^r   MISSIONS.  163 

ination  :  justice  demanded  that  they  should  deal  with  it 
according  to  its  merits ;  and  it  was  imperatively  their  duty 
to  ascertain  what  these  merits  were. 

As  he  sat  down,  Dr.  Erskine  and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hamilton, 
of  Gladsmuir,  rose  together.  The  venerable  Doctor  yielded 
to  his  opponent,  at  that  time  a  young  man,  merely  remark- 
ing, that  for  the  present,  at  least,  he  had  risen  but  to  second 
the  motion  of  the  "  gentleman  opposite,"  Mr.  Heron.  The 
Rev.  Mr.  Hamilton  then  proceeded  w^ith  his  speech,  —  one 
of  the  most  carefully  written,  apparently,  of  any  delivered 
during  the  course  of  the  debate,  —  one  of  the  most  extraor- 
dinary ever  delivered  anywhere. 


PART    THIRD. 

"  The  bruit  goeth,"  said  De  Bracy  shrewdly  to  his  com- 
panion in  arms,  the  Templar,  "  that  the  most  holy  order 
of  the  Temple  of  Zion  nurseth  not  a  few  infidels  within 
its  bosom."  David  Hume,  intending  on  one  occasion  to 
be  very  complimentary,  said  nearly  the  same  thing  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland.  Was  the  compliment  deserved,  and, 
if  so,  what  i^eculiar  aspect  did  the  infidelity  of  our  Scottish 
clergy  assume  ?  Was  it  gentlemanly  and  philosophic,  like 
that  of  Hume  himself?  or  highly  seasoned  with  wit,  like 
that  of  Voltaire  ?  or  dignified  and  pompous,  like  that  of 
Gibbon  ?  or  romantic  and  chivalrous,  like  that  of  Lord 
Herbert  of  Cherbury?  or  steeped  in  rufiianism  and  vul- 
garity, like  that  of  Paine?  or  redolent  of  nonsense,  like 
that  of  Robert  Owen?  Or  was  it  not  rather  of  mark 
enough  to  have  a  character  of  its  own  ?  —  an  infidelity  that 
purported  to  be  anti-Christian  on  Bible  authority,  —  that, 
at  least,  while  it  robed  itself  in  the  i)roper  habiliments  of 
unbelief,  took  the  liberty  of  lacing  them  with  Scripture 
edgings  ?  May  we  crave  the  attention  of  the  reader, 
instead  of  directly  answering  any  of  these  queries,  to  the 
facts  and  reasonings  employed  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hamilton, 


164  THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

of  Gladsmuir,  in  opposing  the  motion  of  poor  Robert 
Heron.  Mr.  Hamilton  was  one  of  the  most  respectable 
Moderates  of  his  time.  His  party  shortly  afterwards  hon- 
ored him  with  the  title  of  Doctor  of  Divinity  ;  and  when 
searching^  out  amongj  their  soundest  men  for  a  Moderator 
of  the  General  Assembly,  they  made  choice  of  him.  For 
the  sake  of  brevity,  we  have  taken  very  considerable  lib- 
erties with  the  speakers  whose  more  striking  or  more 
characteristic  ideas  we  have  already  submitted  to  the 
reader ;  we  have  given  the  meaning,  but  not  the  words, 
of  the  first  two,  and  only  a  few  sentences  of  the  last,  in 
the  language  which  he  himself  employed.  But  we  shall 
take  no  such  liberties  with  the  speech  of  Mr.  Hamilton. 
We  cannot  give  the  whole  of  it,  for  it  occupies  ten  rather 
closely-printed  pages ;  but  our  extracts  will  be  all  true  to 
the  original  text.  We  could  scarce  translate  the  senti- 
ments expressed  in  it  into  our  own-  language,  however 
fairly,  without  subjecting  ourselves  to  a  charge  of  exagger- 
ation and  injustice. 

"  I  should  blush,  Moderator,"  said  the  reverend  gentleman,  "  to 
rise  in  this  venerable  Assembly  for  the  purpose  of  opposing  a  plan 
so  beneficent  in  its  first  aspect  as  the  present,  did  not  mature  reflec- 
tion fully  convince  me  that  its  principles  are  not  really  good,  but  merely 
specious;  that  no  such  honor  could  accrue  to  us  from  supporting 
and  promoting  it,  as  its  friends  among  us  have  fondly  anticipated ; 
and  because  no  such  benefits  could  in  all  probability  result  from  the 
execution  of  it  to  mankind  as  they  have  no  less  fondly  imagined 
and  described.  Such  being  my  decided  sentiments  on  the  subject, 
I  feel  no  reluctance  to  rise  and  state  them  fully.  I  feel  this  declara- 
tion, indeed,  incumbent  on  me ;  nor  do  I  hesitate  to  say  that,  enter- 
taining these  sentiments,  it  is  as  much  my  duty  to  ivish  that  the  house 
may  he  firm  and  unanimous  in  their  opposition  to  these  overtures,  as  it 
appeared  the  duty  of  those  who  were  of  a  very  different  opinion  to 
be  actuated  hy  a  very  different  desire.  To  diffuse  among  mankind 
the  knowledge  of  a  religion  which  we  profess  to  believe  and  revere, 
is  doubtless  a  good  and  important  work ;  as  to  pray  for  its  diffusion 
and  to  expect  it  is  taught  us  in  the  sacred  volume  of  Scripture.  But 
as  even  the  best  things  are  liable  to  abuse,  and  as  things  the  most 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  165 

excellent  are  most  liable  to  abuse,  so  in  the  present  case  it  happens, 
that  /  cannot  otherwise  consider  the  enthusiasm  on  this  subject  than  as 
the  effect  of  sanguine  and  illusive  views,  the  more  dangerous  because 
the  object  is  plausible  " 

The  vender  will  observe  that  the  Rev.  Mr,  Hamilton,  of 
Gladsmuir,  was  animated  in  his  course  by  a  strong  sense 
of  duty,  and  that  he  was  not  at  all  ashamed  to  boast,  we 
make  no  doubt  very  honestly,  and  with  all  due  modesty, 
of  the  sensitive  tenderness  of  his  conscience.  He  next 
proceeded  to  unfold  the  very  occult  principles  on  which 
his  views  of  duty  were  based. 

"  To  spread  abroad  the  knowledge  of  the  gospel  among  barbarous 
and  heathen  nations,"  he  remarked,  "  seems  to  me  highly  preposter- 
ous, in  as  far  as  it  anticipates,  nay,  as  it  even  reverses,  the  order  of 
nature.  Men  must  be  polished  and  refined  In  their  manners  before 
they  can  be  properly  enlightened  In  religious  truths.  Philosophy 
and  learning  must  in  the  nature  of  things  take  the  precedence. 
Indeed,  it  should  seem  hardly  less  absurd  to  make  revelation  precede 
civilization  In  the  order  of  time,  than  to  pretend  to  unfold  to  a  child 
the  Principia  of  Newton  ere  he  is  made  at  all  acquainted  with  the 
letters  In  the  alphabet.  These  ideas  seem  to  me  alike  founded  in 
error,  and  therefore  I  must  consider  them  both  as  equally  romantic  and 
visionary." 

Mr.  Hamilton  next  deduced  very  fairly  from  these  first 
principles,  that  not  only  are  there  many  millions  of  men  who 
have  no  opportunities  of  embracing  the  gospel,  but  who 
as  certainly,  as  he  himself  very  pointedly  said,  "  ought  to 
have  7i07ieP  The  question  of  their  responsibility  naturally 
suggested  itself  to  him  ;  and  his  benevolent  mind  found  in 
solution  the  following  singularly  comfortable  but  not  the 
less  somewhat  extraordinary  doctrine : 

"  To  this  question  Scripture  furnishes  us  with  an  answer,  plain, 
natural,  and  just.  We  are  in  it  told  that  '  a  man  is  to  be  judged 
according  to  what  he  hath,  not  according  to  what  he  hath  not.'  We 
are,  moreover,  told  by  Paul  to  the  same  purpose  '  that  the  Gentiles 


166  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

which  have  not  the  law  are  a  law  unto  themselves ; '  and  that '  they 
who  are  without  law  shall  be  judged  without  law.'  So  that  the 
gracious  declaration  of  Scripture  ought  to  liberate  from  groundless 
anxiety  the  minds  of  those  who  stated  in  such  moving  language  the 
condition  of  the  lieathen." 

He  next  proceeded  to  show  how  very  excellent  a  condi- 
tion that  of  the  heathen  may  be,  and  caught,  as  he  warmed 
in  his  description,  the  very  spirit  of  Rousseau. 

"  Every  state  of  society,"  he  said,  "  has  vices  and  virtues  peculiar 
to  itself,  which  balance  each  other,  and  are  not  incompatible  with  a 
large  share  of  happiness.  The  untutored  Indian  or  Otaheitan, 
whose  daily  toils  produce  his  daily  food,  and  who,  when  that  is  pro- 
cured, basks  with  his  family  in  the  sun  with  little  reflection  or  care, 
is  not  without  his  simple  virtues.  His  breast  can  beat  high  with  the 
feelings  of  friendship,  his  heart  can  burn  with  the  ardor  of  patriotism ; 
and  although  his  mind  have  not  comprehension  enough  to  grasp  the 
idea  of  general  philanthropy,  yet  the  houseless  stranger  finds  a  sure 
shelter  under  his  hospitable  though  humble  roof,  and  experiences 
that,  though  ignorant  of  the  general  principle,  his  soul  is  attuned  to 
the  feelings  on  which  its  practice  must  generally  depend.  But  go  — 
engraft  on  his  simple  manners  the  customs,  refinements,  and,  may  I 
not  add,  some  of  the  vices  of  civilized  society,  and  the  influence  of 
that  religion  'which  you  give  as  a  compensation  for  the  disadvantages 
attending  such  communications  will  not  refine  his  morals  nor  insure  his 
happiness.  Of  the  change  of  manners,  the  effect  produced  shall 
prove  a  heterogeneous  and  disagreeable  combination ;  and  of  the 
change  of  opinion,  the  effects  shall  be  a  tormenting  uncertainty 
respecting  some  things,  a  great  misapprehension  of  others,  and  a 
misapplication  perhaps  of  all." 

It  was  surely  no  wonder  that  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hamilton 
should  have  exerted  himself,  out  of  a  high  sense  of  duty, 
to  shield  from  the  contamination  of  the  gospel  the  virtues 
of  so  happy  a  state.  He  then  proceeded,  with  all  the 
mingled  zeal  and  knowledge  of  the  philosopher  and  "  qual- 
ified minister,"  to  show  how  very  mischievous  and  danger- 
ous a  thing  this  same  gospel  is,  and  how  very  terribly  it 
would  tend  to  brutalize  savages. 


THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  167 

"  When  they  shall  be  told,"  he  said,  "  that  a  man  Is  saved  not  by 
good  works,  but  by  faith,  what  will  be  the  consequence  ?  We  have 
too  much  experience  of  the  difficulty  of  guarding  our  own  people 
against  the  most  deplorable  misapplication  of  this  principle ;  though 
here  the  people  are  instructed  by  stated  and  regular  pastors,  though 
their  minds  have  been  early  imbued  with  a  pious  and  virtuous 
education,  and  though  they  are  daily  warned  of  the  folly  and  danger 
of  immorality  under  this  pretext,  we  have  too  much  experience  of 
this  fatal  tendency  at  home,  I  say,  with  all  our  refinement,  to  enter- 
tain a  rational  doubt  that  the  wild  inhabitants  of  uncivilized  regions 
would  use  it  as  a  handle  for  the  most  flagrant  violation  of  justice  and 
morality." 

Mr.  Hamilton,  early  in  his  speech,  had  admitted  that, 
could  Christian  missionaries  be  possibly  found  of  the  right 
stamp,  —  men  of  mildly  tempered  zeal,  —  and  that  could  a 
heathen  country  blessed  with  civilization,  and  thus  fitted 
for  receiving  them,  be  also  found,  —  though  evidently, 
according  to  his  estimate,  it  required  no  small  amount 
of  civilization  to  neutralize  the  evils  of  but  a  very  small 
amount  of  Christianity,  —  still  he  would  have  no  very 
serious  objection  against  sending  the  mildly  tempered 
missionaries  to  the  highly  civilized  land.  On  thinking 
over  the  matter,  however,  he  deemed  the  admission  rather 
too  great,  and  he  thus  proceeded  to  qualify  it : 

"  I  formerly  observed,  that  if  missionaries  were  to  be  sent  any- 
where, it  ought  to  be  to  that  country  whose  state  of  civil  society 
should  appear  to  be  fitted  to  receive  It  and  improve  by  revelation. 
But  even  supposing  such  a  nation  could  be  found,  I  should  still  have 
weighty  objections  against  sending  missionaries  thither.  Why  should 
we  scatter  our  forces  and  spend  our  strength  In  foreign  service,  when 
our  utmost  vigilance  is  required  at  home  ?  " 

The  concluding  stroke  in  the  following  passage  will 
scarce  fail  in  provoking  the  smile  of  the  reader.  Most 
involuntarily,  evidently,  did  the  admission  which  it  con- 
veys fall  from  the  speaker.  It  was  a  grace  beyond  the 
reach  of  art,  —  one  at  least  which  only  our  master  dram- 
atists could  have  equalled : 


168  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

"What  general,"  said  Mr.  Hamilton,  "would  desire  to  achieve 
distant  conquests,  and  scatter  for  this  purpose  his  troops  over  a 
distant  and  strange  land,  when  the  enemy's  forces  were  already 
pouring  into  his  own  country,  estranging  the  citizens  from  his  inter- 
ests, and  directing  the  whole  force  of  his  artillery  against  the  walls 
of  his  capital.  /  cannot  hut  reflect  with  surprise  that  the  very  men 
who  in  their  sermons^  hy  their  speeches^  by  their  publicatio7is,  in  short, 
by  everything  but  their  ofcn  lives,  are  anxious  to  shoio  to  the  icorld  the 
groioing  j^rojiigacy  of  the  times  at  home,  —  /  cannot  but  refect  ivith 
surprise  that  these  are  the  very  men  most  zealous  in  promoting  this 
expedition  abroad." 

AYe  can  give,  as  we  have  said,  only  a  part  of  this  sj^eech; 
but  the  whole  is  infinitely  curious.  We  add  just  two  sen- 
tences more  —  the  concluding  ones. 

"  Upon  the  whole,  ichile  we  pray  for  the  propagation  of  the  gospel, 
and  patiently  aivait  its  period,  let  us  unite  in  resolutely  rejecting  these 
overtures.  For  my  OAvn  part  at  least,  I  am  obliged  heartily  to  oppose 
the  motion  for  a  committee,  and  to  substitute  as  a  motion  in  its  place, 
That  the  overtures  from  the  Synods  of  Fife  atid  Moray  be  immediately 
dismissed." 

Mr.  Hamilton  ceased  speaking,  and  sat  down.  On  the 
table  of  the  General  Assembly  there  always  lies  a  Bible. 
It  lay  there  in  even  the  darkest  days  of  Moderate  ascend- 
ency, and  neither  Hill  nor  Robertson  had  dared  to  recom- 
mend its  removal.  The  venerable  leader  of  Evangelism 
rose,  and  pointed  to  the  table.  "Moderator,"  he  said, — 
and  the  brief  and  emphatic  sentence  that  followed  was 
one  of  those  which  men  never  forget,  —  "Moderator,  Rax 
ME  THAT  Bible."  The  Church  of  Scotland  has  her  appro- 
priate Scripture  motto,  borne  in  reference  to  the  burning 
bush  seen  by  the  j^rophet  in  the  wilderness.  Were  she  not 
so  well  provided,  —  were  the  label  still  to  inscribe,  —  we 
could  imagine  many  worse  suggestions  than  that  it  should 
be  occupied  by  the  laconic  though  quaintly-expressed 
request  of  Erskine  —  Rax  me  that  Bible. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  Hamilton,  of  Gladsmuir,  in  the  very  spirit 
of  some  of  our  contemporaries  of  the  press,  who  lie,  in  the 


THE  DEBATE  ON  MISSIONS.  169 

present  controversy,  out  of  sheer  policy,  and  supply  "a 
plentiful  lack"  of  argument  by  a  no  less  marked  fertility 
of  f  ibrication,  had  accused  his  opponents  of  dishonesty. 
Like  a  reverend  gentleman  of  the  present  day,  he  had,  no 
doubt,  felt  it  to  be  his  duty  to  make  the  charge.  The  har- 
vest of  the  preceding  year  had  been  scanty  and  inadequate. 
There  obtained,  in  consequence,  among  the  poorer  people, 
a  very  considerable  amount  of  distress,  which  a  collection 
—  and,  to  the  honor  of  British  liberality,  it  had  been  a 
very  ample  one  —  had  recently  been  made  to  relieve ; 
and,  though  the  money  was  not  yet  expended,  many  and 
urgent,  he  stated,  were  the  demands  upon  it.  "Sorry, 
therefore,  was  he  to  say,  that  in  such  circumstances  of 
calamity  some  of  his  brethren,  without  consulting  any 
ecclesiastical  court,  had  not  only  joined  missionary  socie- 
ties, but  had  also  set  apart  to  their  use  the  money  collected 
for  the  poor.  For  such  improper  conduct,"  he  added, 
"censure  was  by  much  too  small  a  mark  of  disapproba- 
tion :  it  would,  he  doubted  not,  be  a  legal  subject  of  penal 
prosecution."  Dr.  Erskine,  old  as  he  was,  was  not  quite 
the  man  to  suifer  such  a  charge  to  pass  unquestioned,  and 
he  now  peremptorily  demanded  an  explanation.  The 
offence,  he  said,  if  really  perpetrated,  was  a  criminal 
oifence,  and  ought  to  be  dealt  with  as  such  ;  but  it  would 
not  do  thus  to  wound  the  character  of  innocent  men  by 
vague  insinuations  regarding  it.  He  was  entitled,  he  said, 
to  urge  that  the  cases  of  misappropriation  should  be  speci- 
fied, and  the  guilty  individuals  named ;  and  to  urge 
further  that,  should  the  accusation  prove  an  unfounded 
calumny,  it  should  meet  with  the  merited  contempt.  He 
paused  for  a  reply ;  and  the  pause  was  a  long,  and,  to  Mr. 
Hamilton,  a  singularly  embarrassing  one.  But  he  at  length 
stammered  out  an  explanation.  When  he  had  said  that 
money  collected  for  the  poor  had  been  set  apart  for  the 
use  of  missionary  societies,  he  had  not  at  all  meant  that 
money  professedly  collected  for  the  poor  had  been  set 
apart  to  their  use.     He  hnd  only  meant  that  money  col- 

15 


170  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

lected  at  cliurch-doors  for  missionary  societies  had  been 
thus  appropriated  to  missionary  purposes;  and  that  all 
money  collected  at  church-doors  seemed  to  him  to  belong 
to  the  poor.  An  offence  for  which  censure  was  too  small 
a  mark  of  disapprobation  —  which  ought  rather  to  be  made 
a  subject  of  penal  prosecution  —  resolved  itself  simply  into 
the  fact,  that  Dr.  Erskine,  and  several  other  ministers  be- 
sides, had  made  church-door  collections  for  missionary 
objects,  w^ith  the  full  consent  of  their  several  sessions,  with 
full  and  public  intimation  to  their  several  congregations 
beforehand  of  the  purj30ses  to  which  the  money  was  to  be 
applied,  and,  withal,  with  fair  deduction  from  the  amount 
received  of  the  average  Sunday  collections  for  the  poor. 
Moderatism  in  those  days  must  surely  have  had  a  very 
nice  perception  of  crime. 

The  minister  of  Gladsmuir  was,  it  is  said,  a  man  of  mild 
and  insinuating  manners,  — very  much  a  gentleman  of  the 
old  school,  —  fluent  and  bland,  and  who  ever  deemed  it  a 
solecism  in  politeness  to  lose  temper  in  company.  We 
have  been  told,  however,  that  there  were  four  little  words 
w^hich  he  could  never  contrive  to  hear  unmoved:  they 
brought  a  singularly  unpleasant  scene  to  his  recollection, 
and  operated  on  him  like  the  sight  of  the  bodkin  on  Sir 
Percy  Shafton.  If  an  acquaintance  wished  to  see  him 
redden  and  get  silent  in  even  his  gayest  and  most  con- 
versible  moods,  he  had  but  to  whisper  in  his  ear.  Rax 
ME  THAT  Bible.  He  had  studied,  when  a  very  young 
man,  what  Dr.  Johnson  had  termed  the  art  of  "labored 
gesticulation,"  in  the  belief,  doubtless,  that  his  facts  and 
his  arguments  would  be  materially  strengthened  by  the 
motions  of  his  hands  and  his  legs.  He  had  had  on  this 
occasion  much  to  prove;  and  therefore,  to  employ  the 
language  of  the  writer  just  named,  he  had  "rolled  his 
■eyes,  and  puffed  his  cheeks,  and  spread  abroad  his  arms, 
and  stamped  on  the  ground,  and  turned  his  eyes  sometimes 
to  the  ceiling  and  sometimes  to  the  floor."  Dr.  Erskine 
regretted  that  he  could  treat  the  Assembly  to  no  such 


THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  171 

dis}3lay  of  oratory.  In  his  young  days,  he  said,  the  art  had 
been  very  little  studied  in  Scotland.  He  had  passed 
through  his  curriculu'm  at  a  time  when  there  had  been 
even  no  professor  of  rhetoric  in  any  Scotch  college ;  his 
oratorical  education  had  thus  been  sadly  neglected;  but 
he  fain  hoped  the  house  would  bear  with  him  notwith- 
standing. He  knew,  he  trusted,  a  little  of  church  history, 
and  a  little  of  common  sense ;  and  his  arguments,  if  solid, 
might  just  be  permitted  to  stand  "for  what  they  were 
worth,  though  unembellished  by  the  flowers  of  imagery  or 
the  graces  of  style." 

He  referred  in  terms  of  thorough  approval  to  the  senti- 
ments expressed  by  Mr.  Heron  :  they  had  left  him  nothing 
to  add,  he  said,  regarding  the  civilizing  influence  of  Chris- 
tianity, or  in  reference  to  the  means  possessed  at  that  time 
by  our  country  of  spreading  them  abroad.  He  went  on, 
therefore,  to  take  a  historical  view  of  what  had  been 
already  accomplished  in  the  missionary  field.  He  alluded 
to  the  missions  of  the  Romish  Church,  and  decided 
shrewdly  on  their  character.  They  had  left  no  traces 
behind  them,  he  said,  but  traces  of  desolation  and  misery. 
It  was  a  significant  fact,  too,  that  the  countries  chos^  i  as 
the  scene  of  them  were  either  rich  in  mines,  or  amply  fur- 
nished, through  a  fertile  soil  and  genial  climate,  with  the 
conveniences  and  delicacies  of  life.  The  fields  selected 
for  their  operations  were  fields  in  which  power  or  wealth,  or 
at  least  a  state  of  luxurious  indulgence,  might  be  attained 
to  by  the  missionary ;  and  their  entire  history,  constitut- 
ing, as  it  did,  a  record  of  rapine,  cruelty,  and  secular  aggran- 
dizement, gave  evidence  of  a  false,  not  of  a  true  church. 
Still,  however,  when  Papists,  priding  themselves  on  their 
own  exertions,  turned  to  Protestant  churches,  and  asked,  in 
derision,  what  they  had  done  to  spread  abroad  the  faith 
which  they  professed  to  value,  or  whether  their  indifferency 
regarding  its  promulgation  did  not  argue  the  weakness  of 
their  convictions  of  its  truth,  the  question  was  by  much 
too  rational  to  be  despised.     And  it  was  a  question  which 


172  THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

could  be  answered  only  by  deeds.  Something  had  already 
been  done  by  Protestants;  —  more,  as  if  to  show  that  it 
was  will,  not  ability,  which  was  wanting,  by  one  of  the 
poorest  and  least  considerable  powers  of  Europe  (Den- 
mark) than  by  all  the  other  Protestant  states  put  together. 
He  referred  to  the  signal  labors  of  the  Moravians,  as  re- 
corded by  Crantz  and  Latrobe.  He  ran  over  the  history 
of  missions  in  connection  with  Great  Britain  ;  that  of  the 
London  Missionary  Society,  instituted  by  royal  authority 
in  the  days  of  William,  which,  for  many  years  after  its 
institution,  had  communicated  precious  light  to  multi- 
tudes who  would  otherwise  have  remained  in  darkness. 
He  referred  to  the  society  established  early  in  the  century 
in  Scotland.  He  alluded  briefly  to  the  more  recently 
established  societies  of  our  several  large  towns  —  socie- 
ties differently  constituted,  he  said,  from  each  other,  and 
composed  of  various  materials,  but  of  all  of  which  he 
approved  more  or  less,  for  of  all  the  great  object  was  the 
same ;  and,  however  diverse  might  be  the  sects  engaged  in 
them,  he  deemed  all  i:)oints  of  inferior  moment  lost  in  the 
importance  of  the  general  cause.  He  paused  briefly  to 
consider  the  arguments  of  Mr.  Hamilton.  Was  it  really 
so  absolutely  necessary  that  learning  and  philosophy 
should  i^recede  the  introduction  of  the  gospel?  He  had 
been  ever  accustomed  to  consider  it  the  peculiar  glory  of 
Christianity  that  it  Avas  adapted  alike  to  the  citizen  and 
the  savage  ;  that  it  not  only  enlightened  spiritual  darkness, 
but  promoted  also  temporal  civilization.  The  "testimony 
of  the  Lord  maketh  icise  the  simple^  Christ,  in  the  days 
of  the  apostles,  had  been  made  "all  in  all"  to  barbarians 
and  Scythians.  Would  it  have  been  so  if  to  barbarians 
and  Scythians  Christ  had  not  been  preached  ?  Was  it 
not  the  theme  of  prophecy,  that  the  benign  influences 
of  the  gospel  should  smooth  down  the  shag  of  human 
nature  in  realms  the  most  barbarous  and  uncivilized  ? 
How  else  did  they  interpret  the  bold  metaphors  of  Isaiah  ? 
"  The  desert  shall  rejoice  and  blossom  like  the  rose ;  and 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  173 

instead  of  the  brier  shall  spring  up  the  fir  tree ;  and 
instead  of  the  thorn,  the  myrtle  tree."  What  was  the 
testimony  of  history  on  the  point  ?  Did  not  the  Fathers 
of  the  second  century  boast  that  the  Mauritanians,  the 
Getulians,  and  other  savage  nations,  had  submitted  to  the 
government  of  Zion's  King?  What  was  the  experience 
of  their  own  times  ?  Had  they  heard  nothing  of  the  labors 
of  Elliot,  Brainerd,  and  the  two  Mayhews,  among  the 
fierce  Indians  of  North  America?  Or  had  civilization 
visited  the  blealc  coasts  of  Greenland  and  Labrador  ere 
the  Unitas  Fratrum  had  preached  the  gospel  there  wdth 
such  signal  success?  Some  of  his  younger  brethren  oppo- 
site, no  doubt,  deemed  him  a  fanatic,  and  might  care  little, 
therefore,  for  his  opinions  ;  but  the  question  was  not  one 
of  opinion  ;  • —  he  could  assure  them  he  was  dealing  in  this 
matter  with  only  solid  and  well  authenticated  facts.  He 
alluded  to  the  recent  scarcity,  and  to  Mr.  Hamilton's  terror 
of  injuring  the  poor  and  exhausting  the  rich  by  their  mis- 
sionary claims.  What  signs  of  scarcity,  he  asked,  did  the 
tables,  equipage,  or  general  economy  of  the  opulent  among 
them  exhibit  ?  Had  public  calamity  lessened  either  the 
power  or  inclination  to  extravagance?  Was  not  rather 
the  profusion  in  meats  and  drinks  as  ranrked,  —  were  not 
the  carriages  in  our  streets  as  sumptuous,  the  attendants 
as  numerous,  —  and  were  not  theatres,  assemblies,  and 
card-tables,  as  muck  frequented  as  ever?  "Besides,"  he 
added,  "I  early  learned,  and,  though  old,  have  not  forgot 
the  lesson,  that  the  exercise  of  every  habit  naturally  tends 
to  strengthen  and  improve  it;  and  therefore  am  I  inclined 
to  think  that  a  wish  to  benefit  our  fellow-creatures  in 
distant  regions,  and  an  occasional  donation  in  their  behalf, 
instead  of  lessening,  will  serve  to  increase  the  compas- 
sion of  the  givers  for  the  needy  at  home,  and  thus  widen, 
instead  of  contracting,  the  channels  of  general  benevo- 
lence." He  concluded  by  giving  expression  to  his  cordial 
approbation  of  the  motion  of  Mr,  Heron,  which  he  had 
already  seconded, 

15* 


174  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

The  Rev.  Dr.  Erskine  was  succeeded  by  the  Rev.  Dr. 
Alexander  Carlyle,  minister  of  Inveresk ;  and  as  the  S2:)eech 
of  this  gentleman  was  a  short  and  very  extraordinary  one, 
we  shall  give  it  entire.  Dr.  Carlyle  was,  of  all  his  party, 
the  boldest  and  most  uncompromising  advocate  of  the 
theatre,  —  one  of  the  truly  liberal  in  the  case  of  Plome  and 
his  tragedy,  —  in  short,  a  man  enlightened  enough  in  his 
views  of  dramatic  representation  to  have  almost  wiped 
away  the  stain  of  bigotry  and  narrowness  from  an  entire 
Church.  But  there  is,  alas !  no  perfection  in  whatever  is 
human ;  and  there  were  matters  in  which  even  he,  with  all 
his  general  liberality,  could  be  narrow  and  bigoted.  He 
exhausted  the  charities  of  his  nature  in  tolerating  balls 
and  the  theatre;  and  for  the  gospel  of  Christ  and  the 
cause  of  its  extension  he  had  no  tolerance  and  no  charity. 

"  Moderator,"  he  said,  "  my  reverend  brother,  whose  universal 
charity  is  so  well  known  to  me,  has  just  been  giving  a  new  and 
extraordinary  instance  of  it ;  —  no  less  than  proposing  as  a  model  for 
our  imitation  the  zeal  for  propagating  the  Christian  religion  displayed 
hy  Roman  Catholics.  When  we  see  the  tide  of  infidelity  and  licen- 
tiousness so  great,  and  so  constantly  increasing,  in  our  oAvn  land,  it 
would  indeed  be  highly  preposterous  to  carry  our  zeal  to  another 
and  a  far  distant  one.  When  our  religion  requires  the  most  unre- 
mitted and  strenuous  defence  against  internal  invasion,  it  would  be 
highly  absurd  to  think  of  making  distant  converts  by  external  mis- 
sionaries. This  is  indeed  beginning  where  we  should  end.  I  have, 
on  various  occasions,  during  &  period  of  almost  half  a  century^  had  the 
honor  of  being  a  member  of  the  General  Assembly,  Yet  this  is  the 
first  time  I  remember  to  have  ever  heard  such  a  proposal  made,  and  I 
cannot  help  also  thinking  it  the  worst  time.  As  clei-gymen,  let  us 
pray  that  Christ's  kingdom  may  come,  as  ice  are  assured  it  shall  come 
in  the  course  of  Providence.  Let  us,  as  clergymen,  also  instruct  our 
people  in  their  duty ;  and,  both  as  clergymen  and  as  Christians,  let 
our  light  so  shine  before  men,  that,  seeing  our  good  works,  they  may 
be  led  to  glorify  our  heavenly  Father.  This  is  the  true  mode  of 
propagating  the  gospel ;  this  is  far  preferable  to  giving  countenance 
to  a  plan  which  has  well  been  styled  visionary.  I,  therefore,  do  heartily 
second  the  motion  made  some  time  ago  by  my  young  friend  Mr. 
Hamilton,  that  the  overtures  be  immediately  dismissed." 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  175 


PART    FOURTH. 

The  characters  in  the  debate  on  missions  stand  out  in 
bold  relief.  There  is  a  dramatic  force  and  picturesqueness 
about  them.  Evangelism  had  to  contend  against  the  cur- 
rent of  the  age :  it  was  alike  denounced  by  the  worlds  of 
literature  and  fashion.  The  politically  powerful  exerted 
themselves  to  crush  it  as  mischievous ;  the  gay  and  dissi- 
pated denounced  it  as  morose  and  intolerant ;  the  widely- 
spread  skepticism  of  the  period  characterized  it  as  irrational 
and  absurd ;  historians  had  written  whole  volumes  to  tra- 
duce and  vilify  it ;  and  genius  had  striven  to  render  it 
ridiculous  in  song.  It  behooved  its  more  strenuous  as- 
sertors,  therefore,  to  be  men  of  at  least  some  force  of  char- 
acter; and  force  of  character  never  exists  without  those 
accompanying  peculiarities  which  in  the  drama  of  life  con- 
stitute well-marked  individuality.  Moderatism,  on  the 
other  hand,  enjoyed  singular  advantages,  though  of  an 
opposite  nature,  of  developing  itself  in  its  true  proportions. 
It  had  not,  as  now,  tamely  and  timidly  to  conform  to  the 
influence  of  the  pressure  from  without ;  there  was  scarce 
any  pressure  from  without  at  the  time  :  it  could  venture 
on  being  w^ell-nigh  whatever  it  wished  to  be.  And  hence 
strongly  marked  character  on  the  part  of  Moderatism  also. 
From  diametrically  opposite  but  equally  efiicient  causes, 
specimens  of  both  parties,  singularly  characteristic,  were 
exhibited  in  this  debate.  Erskine,  Hill,  Heron,  Hamilton, 
the  simple-hearted  clergyman  of  Alves,  and  the  A^enerable 
minister  of  Leith,  appear  all  before  us  like  the  well-drawn 
dramatis  per sonce  of  a  masterly  play.  But  of  all  the  char- 
acters exhibited,  perhaps  none  were  better  marked  than 
that  of  the  last  speaker.  Dr.  Carlyle.  He  was  a  Moderate 
on  a  larger  scale  than  could  be  produced  in  the  altered 
atmosphere  of  the  present  day.  In  digging  him  out,  we 
feel  as  if  we  had  fallen  somehow  on  a  fossil  Moderate ; 
and  are  struck,  in  contemplating  the  mighty  fragments, 
with  the   degeneracy  of  his  comparatively  dwarfish  sue- 


176  THE  DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

cessors.  Dr.  Bryce  planted  astride  the  shoulders  of  Dr. 
Cook  would  fail  to  overtop  a  single  Dr.  Alexander  Carlyle. 
"  Both  as  clergymen  and  Christians  let  our  light  so  shine 
before  men,"  said  the  reverend  Doctor,  "  that,  seeing  our 
good  works,  they  may  be  led  to  glorify  our  heavenly 
Father.  This  is  the  true  mode  of  propagating  the  gospel ; 
this  is  far  preferable  to  giving  countenance  to  a  plan  which 
has  well  been  styled  visionary.^''  Now,  it  is  surely  natural 
to  ask,  after  what  particular  fashion  was  the  light  of  the 
Rev.  Dr.  Carlyle  made  to  shine  before  men?  Or,  what 
was  its  character  as  light  ?  Or,  was  it  light  at  all  ?  We 
have  already  alluded  to  his  liberality  of  opinion  respecting 
theatrical  representation.  Milton  had  his  prejudices  against 
play-acting  parsons,  —  "men  who  shamefully  prostituted 
their  ministry,"  he  said,  "  by  writhing  and  unboning  their 
clergy  limbs  to  all  tlie  antic  and  dishonest  gestures  of 
Trinculos,  buffoons,  and  bawds."  Not  such,  however,  was 
the  feeling  of  Dr.  Cailyle:  he  was  more  than  tolerant  of 
play-acting  parsons.  He  was  a  play-acting  parson  himself. 
On  one  occasion  at  least,  when  a  select  batch  of  Moderate 
divines  rehearsed  the  tragedy  of  Douglas  in  the  house  of 
an  Edinburgh  actress,  the  Doctor,  a  large,  dignified-looking 
man,  well-known  among  the  wags  of  the  bar  as  Jupiter 
Tonans,  performed  to  admiration  the  part  of  Old  Norval. 
Dr.  Hugh  Blair  personified  the  Lady  Annn.  Carlyle,  from 
being  an  actor  himself,  proceeded  next  to  be  an  instructor 
of  actors.  The  Edinburgh  playhouse  of  those  days,  as 
the  reader  of  Ferguson's  "  Burlesque  Elegy  "  must  needs 
remember,  was  in  the  Canongate.  The  manager  was  a  Mr. 
Digges,  and  one  of  the  prettiest  of  his  staff  was  a  Mrs. 
Ward,  an  actress  of  considerable  ability,  but,  as  was  com- 
mon at  the  time  to  the  profession,  of  equivocal  charac- 
ter ;  and  poor  Jupiter  Tonans,  in  urging  his  instructions, 
"had  made  his  light  so  shine"  that  the  tongue  of  scandal 
became  busy.  The  case,  among  other  matters,  was  brought 
before  the  Presbytery  of  Edinburgh;  and  the  reverend 
Doctor,  who  seems  to  have  been  a  man  of  infinite  frank- 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  177 

ness,  to  save  the  Presbytery  the  trouble  of  leading  proof, 
at  once  acknowledged  that  he  had  been  not  only  in  taverns 
with  the  actors,  but  also  occasionally  in  Mr.  Digges'  house, 
hearing  parts  of  the  tragedy  rehearsed  by  Mrs.  Ward  and 
the  others;  but  that  on  no  occasion  had  he  ever  ate  or 
drank  with  the  lady,  or  conversed  with  her  farther  than  in 
agreeing  or  disagreeing  to  what  was  said  about  the  phiy." 
This  was  of  course  satisfactory ;  for  who  could  know  so 
well  as  the  Doctor  himself?  When  the  tragedy  came  at 
length  to  be  acted,  some  of  the  clerical  friends  of  the 
author  were  led,  by  the  interest  they  felt  in  its  success,  to 
linger  about  the  house,  without  actually  appearing  in  the 
boxes.  Hence  the  point  of  a  stanza,  the  production  of 
some  Edinburgh  wit  of  the  period : 

"  Hid  close  in  the  green-room  some  clergymen  lay, 
Good  actors  themselves,  —  their  ichole  lives  a  play." 

Dr.  Carlyle,  however,  with  a  few  others,  had  more  courage. 
He  appeared  openly  among  the  audience,  armed  with  a 
bludgeon.  In  the  course  of  the  evening,  two  wild  young 
fellows,  reckless  with  intoxication,  forced  themselves  into 
his  box ;  and  the  Doctor,  though  known,  says  one  of  his 
biographers,  from  "  his  repeated  exertions  in  favor  of  the 
law  of  patronage,  and  his  strong  dislike  of  fanatics,  by  the 
title  of  the  preserver  of  the  Church  from  fanaticism^''  stood 
up  at  once  in  the  character  of  a  Non-Intrusionist.  He  was 
perfectly  sober  at  the  time,  and  of  great  muscular  strength ; 
and  succeeded,  to  the  great  delight  of  the  lesser  gods  in 
the  gallery,  after  a  slight  struggle,  in  ejecting  both  the  in- 
truders. Though  a  leading  and  influential  man  among  his 
party,  most  of  them  seem  to  have  regarded  his  character 
as  somewhat  too  extreme.  When  appointed  to  preach 
before  the  Lord  High  Commissioner,  in  1760,  there  was  a 
solemn  dissent  entered  on  the  part  of  some  of  his  brethren, 
which  still  exists  in  the  records  of  the  Church ;  "  and  the 
case,"  says  Morren,  "  is  the  only  one  on  record  in  which  the 


178  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

preacher  proposed  by  the  committee  was  objected  to  in  the 
Assembly."  Xearly  tliirty  years  afterwards,  however,  and 
but  a  short  time  before  the  debate  on  missions  took  place, 
he  very  nearly  carried  the  principal  clerkship  in  a  struggle 
of  unprecedented  keenness.  He  shone  as  a  wit;  and  suc- 
ceeded at  times  in  raising  the  laugh  against  Evangelism,  by 
his  narratives  of  the  opinions  entertained  on  doctrine  or 
church  policy  by  the  fisher  population  of  his  ptirish.  Some 
Janet  Skatecreel,  or  Donald  Mucklebacket,  had  come,  he 
had  found,  to  the  same  conclusion  on  a  debated  point  with 
the  Witherspoons  and  Erskincs,  his  opponents ;  and  he 
rarely  failed  in  exciting  the  merriment  of  the  brethren  with 
whom  he  voted,  by  his  ludicrous  representations  of  the 
evangelic  prejudices  of  Janet  or  Donald.  There  were 
cases,  however,  in  which  the  laugh  was  turned  very  conclu- 
sively against  himself.  He  had  been  all  his  life  long  a  keen 
supporter  of  Toryism.  In  his  exertions  to  support  the 
policy  of  Pitt  and  Dundas,  he  had,  to  employ  the  language 
of  one  of  his  brethren,  who  spoke  both  for  the  Doctor  and 
himself,  "  risked  even  the  friendship  of  his  flock,  and  his 
own  usefulness  as  a  pastor  among  them."  He  had  taken  a 
deep  interest  in  the  bill  proposed  in  1793  for  the  augmen- 
tation of  ministers'  stipends.  It  had  been  set  aside,  to  his 
signal  mortification,  by  his  friends  the  Tories;  and  the 
reverend  Doctor,  in  the  ensuing  Assembly,  proved  unable 
to  conceal  his  disappointment  and  chagrin.  He  went 
the  length  even  of  charging  the  ministry  with  "ingrati- 
tude to  their  best  friends,"  and  in  a  style  fully  more 
lachrymose  than  pathetic;  and  the  complaint  was  ludi- 
crously paraphrased,  in  reply,  by  the  singularly  able  and 
accomplished  Dr.  Bryce  Johnstone,  in  the  words  of  Balaam's 
ass,  "Am  I  not  thine  ass,  on  whom  thou  hast  ridden  ever 
since  I  was  thine  until  this  day  ?  "  Dr.  Johnstone  followed 
up  the  allusion  in  a  vein  of  the  happiest  ridicule,  amid  the 
irrepressible  laughter  of  the  house ;  the  hint  was  caught 
by  the  eccentric  Kay ;  and  in  his  caricature,  ^'-faithful  ser- 
vice reicarded^''  vol.  it.  p.  118,  the  reader  may  see  a  neatly 


^  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  179 

etched  head  of  Jupiter  Tonans  attached  to  a  long-bodied, 
crocodile-looking  jackass,  bestridden  by  the  late  Lord  Mel- 
ville. In  his  latter  days  Dr.  Carlyle  tired,  it  is  said,  not 
only  of  preaching  sermons,  but  also  of  hearing  them 
preached.  He  furnished  himself  with  an  assistant ;  and 
leaving  him  to  his  prayers,  as  Hume  did  La  Roche,  he 
might  himself  be  seen  almost  every  fine  Sunday,  during 
the  time  of  divine  service,  sauntering  along  the  Mussel- 
burgh racecourse.  The  light  of  the  reverend  Doctor  seems 
to  have  been  a  beacon  light ;  it  shone  before  men  to  show 
them,  not  the  course  which  they  ought  to  pursue,  but  the 
course  w*hich  they  were  by  all  means  to  avoid. 

He  spoke  just  two  sentences  more  during  the  course  of 
the  debate  on  missions.  Principal  Hill  had  made  a  long 
speech,  which  occupies  nearly  twelve  pages  of  the  printed 
report,  in  which  he  at  once  strenuously  labored  to  defeat 
the  missionary  cause,  and  to  deprecate,  by  a  vein  of  gen- 
eral though  singularly  inconclusive  concession  in  its  favor, 
the  odium  which  might,  he  feared,  attach  to  such  a  course. 
Dr.  Carlyle  had  no  such  fears,  and  no  respect,  apparently, 
for  the  tone  of  timid  conciliation  which  they  inspired. 
Though  complimented  by  the  Principal,  who  quoted  his 
observations  as  excellent,  and  referred  to  him  as  his  revered 
father,  the  old  man  rose  in  evident  impatience  as  the 
younger  concluded,  and  addressed  the  moderator. 

"  Moderator,"  he  said,  "  a  motion  was  some  time  ago  made  '  to 
dismiss  the  overtures,'  and  I  insist  the  first  thing  to  he  done  is  to  con- 
sider of  this.  We  may  then  judge  of  the  propriety  of  the  recom- 
mendation and  resolutions  proposed  by  the  reverend  Principal ;  hut 
I  desire  that  we  may  first  proceed  to  dismiss  the  overtures" 

He  might  have  been  more  tolerant  of  the  concessions  of 
Principal  Hill.  They  were  not  intended  to  do  either  him 
or  his  cause  any  harm.  Is  the  reader  acquainted  with  Vol- 
taire's story  of  the  two  Roman  Catholic  missionaries  who 
quarrelled  at  Pekin  ?    A  Jansenist  and  Jesuit,  both  brimful 


180  THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

of  zeal  for  Mother  Church  and  the  conversion  of  the 
Chinese,  and  both  equally  hostile,  the  one  to  the  heresies 
of  Janseiiius,  and  the  other  to  the  policy  of  Loyola,  had 
met  in  their  rounds  within  the  precincts  of  the  Celestial 
Court.  The  Jesuit  denounced  the  five  propositions,  and 
asserted  the  doctrines  of  Habert.  The  Jansenist  also  de- 
nounced the  five  propositions,  and  repeated  the  sarcasms 
of  Pascal.  They  became  angry  and  loud,  and  cuffed  and 
scratched,  and  tore  one  another's  beards,  and  the  noise  of 
the  fray  reached  the  ears  of  the  emperor.  "  Clap  up  these 
French  Bonzes  in  prison,"  said  the  great-grandchild  of  the 
sun,  —  "clap  them  up  instantly  in  prison:  could  they  not 
have  staid  and  quarrelled  in  their  own  country?"  —  "And 
how  long,  sire,  shall  we  keep  them  there  ?  "  asked  a  man- 
darin in  attendance.  "Till  they  have  fully  agreed,"  said 
the  emperor.  "Alas,  sire!"  replied  the  mandarin,  who 
knew  the  sort  of  persons  with  whom  he  had  to  deal, — 
"alas,  sire!  in  that  case  you  condemn  them  to  prison  for 
life,  for  they  loill  never  agreed''  Is  the  reader  prepared  to 
find  the  hinging  point  of  the  joke  of  Voltaire  converted 
into  a  serious  argument  against  missions  by  Principal  Hill? 
Such,  however,  was  the  case.  It  had  been  stated  by  Dr. 
Erskine  that  there  were  various  sects  engaged  in  the 
societies,  in  whose  welfare,  deeming  all  points  of  inferior 
moment  lost  in  the  importance  of  the  general  cause,  he  felt 
so  warm  an  interest.  It  had  been  asserted  further,  on  the 
same  principle,  in  the  address  of  the  Edinburgh  Society, 
—  a  document  characterized  by  the  reverend  Principal  as 
breathing  only  "  a  spirit  of  conceit^''  and  fitted  merely  to 
excite  feelings  of  "  compassion  bordering  on  contemi^t^''  — 
that  they  sought  not  to  "  export  the  shibboleth  of  a  party." 
The  sectarian  was  to  be  sunk  in  the  Christian.  He  had 
found,  withal,  in  the  society's  regulations,  that  "every  mis- 
sionary to  be  ordained,  after  being  approved  of  by  the 
society,  should  be  remitted  for  ordination  to  the  particular 
religious  connection  to  which  he  belonged."  His  reflec- 
tions on  these  several  points  we  give  in  the  words  of  the 
report : 


THE    DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  181 

"  Alas  ! "  he  exclaimed,  "  is  this  the  whole  extent  of  the  liberality 
so  much  professed  ?  Is  this  the  sense  in  which  '  the  shibboleth  of  a 
party '  is  disclaimed  ?  What  can  be  more  palpably  plain  than  that 
this  remission  of  the  approved  missionaries  for  ordination  to  the 
particular  sect  to  which  they  belong  (and  we  find  that  all  sects  are 
invited  to  join  in  the  undertaidng),  is,  in  fact,  sending  out '  the  shib- 
boleth of  a  party'  in  its  strictest  sense  —  is  sending  out  men  warm 
with  the  deep  impression  of  party,  and  is  enlisting  them  in  hostile 
bands  against  each  other  on  the  very  eve  of  departure.  How  soon 
their  polemical  controversies  may  burst  forth  I  know  not ;  but  when 
they  do  burst  forth,  wretched  must  be  the  state  of  the  half-converted 
heathen  whose  spiritual  darkness  shall  only  have  given  place  to  light 
rendered  horrible  by  the  shapeless  phantoms  of  gloomy  doubt  and 
degrading  superstition.  On  account  of  the  missionaries  themselves, 
too,  when  these  controversies  shall  have  appeared,  the  societies  at 
home  may  too  late  be  led  to  deplore  their  hazardous  and  rash 
attempts — may  too  late  discover  that,  besides  sowing  ynisery  where 
they  promised  happiness^  missionaries  have  gone  to  fght,  not  merely  by 
argument,  but  even  —  thought  full  of  horror!  —  to  fight 

BY  CUTTING  ONE  ANOTHER'S  THROATS  IN  THE  BATTLES  OF 

RELIGION  ON  A  FOREIGN  SHORE  !  If  the  societies  recoil  with 
horror  from  such  an  anticipated,  let  them  be  careful  in  due  time  to 
prevent  this  realized,  consequence." 

What,  compared  to  this,  was  the  ingenious  fiction  of 
Voltaire !  The  reverend  Principal,  as  second  minister  of 
St.  Andrew's,  was  of  course  a  member  of  the  Synod  of 
Fife  —  one  of  the  two  synods  from  which  the  overtures 
under  discussion  had  been  sent  to  the  Assembly.  Why 
omit,  as  it  turned  out  he  had  done,,  opposing  the  trans- 
mission of  the  Fife  overture  in  the  synod  ?  Why  not 
crush  the  snake  in  the  Qgg'i  The  reasons  why,  as  stated 
by  himself,  are  sufficiently  characteristic.  The  overture,  as 
originally  drawn  up,  bore  a  preamble  recommendatory  of 
missionary  societies.  It  stated  "that  a  desirable  spirit 
had  of  late  appeared  to  pervade  a  numerous  body  of  our 
fellow-Christians,  in  various  parts  of  this  island,  for  propa- 
gating the  religion  of  Jesus  Christ."  We  again  return  to 
the  report : 

16 


182  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

"  Such,  sir,"  said  the  reverend  Principal,  "  was  originally  the  sub- 
stance of  the  preamble  to  this  overture,  and  I  declared,  on  hearing 
it,  what  I  have  already  repeated,  that  should  any  such  preamble 
have  appeiired  in  the  overture,  I  should  have  slrenuousli/  opposed  and 
divided  the  synod  upon  it.  As  it  pleased  the  gentleman  who  pro- 
posed it,  however,  to  leave  out  this  higldy  objectionable  clause,  I  saw 
no  reason  for  refusing  my  assent  to  it  as  it  at  present  stands.  Tiie 
overture  seemed  to  have  a  pious  object  in  view;  and,  if  not  promis- 
ing to  he  useful,  seemed  at  least  to  promise  to  he  innocent,  in  its  effects. 
In  its  present  form  the  Assembly  may  ta^e  it  up  or  not,  just  as  they 
think  proper.  It  is  clothed  in  expressions  so  general  and  vague,  — 
IT  RECOMMENDS  AN  OBJECT  SO  TRULY  CHRISTIAN  and  War- 
ranted by  Scripture  prophrcy,  yet  so  great  and  comprehensive  in 
its  aspect,  involving  so  many  perplexing  considerations,  and  promis- 
ing such  uncertain  consequences,  —  that  I  am  inclined  to 
THINK  the  Assembly  are  not  called  on  to  consider  it,  but  might 
SIMPLY  dismiss  IT  A;T  ONCE,  as  wanting  a  specific  object." 

Great  truths  are  laid  open  at  times  by  the  merest  acci- 
dents; and  one  of  these,  stuck  in,  evidently  all  involunta- 
rily, amid  the  tortuous  syllogisms  of  the  reverend  Principal, 
we  find  in  the  passage  just  quoted.     The  Fife   overture 

"recommended  ax  object  so  TEULY  CliRISTIAN,  THAT 
HE  WAS  INCLINED  TO  THINK  THE  ASSEMBLY  MIGHT  DIS- 
MISS IT  AT  ONCE."  If  the  one  leader  originated  in  this 
debate  a  saying  which  might  well  be  adopted  as  the 
watchword  of  his  party,  we  think  the  other  was  no  less 
successful  in  behalf  of  bis. 

But  the  reverend  Principal  was  not  equally  open 
throughout.  Too  frequently  are  the  deliberations  of  pub- 
lic bodies  degraded  by  a  mean  spirit  of  trick.  Wisdom 
and  honesty  to  decide  regarding  the  fair,  the  good,  the  pru- 
dent, are  what  the  exigency  demands;  but  some  influential 
leader  rises,  and  substitutes  cunning  instead.  His  object 
is  not  to  secure,  but  prevent,  the  adoption  of  the  proper 
course  ;  and  this  object  he  pursues  by  means  which,  con- 
sorting entirely  witli  the  character  of  what  he  intends, 
are  just  and  honorable  in  but  the  same  degree  as  those 
employed    by  the  gamester  when  he  loads  his  dice.     A 


THE    DEBATE    02^    MISSIONS.  1S3 

complete  list  of  the  varions  stratagems  resorted  to  in  snch 
cases  would  be  a  long  one — longer  by  far  than  Bacon's 
catalog-ae  of  the  "  wares  of  the  cunning  man."  Hints  for 
half  a  volume  could  have  been  picked  up  at  the  last  Gen- 
eral Assembly  from  the  speeches  of  some  four  or  five  Mod- 
erate elders  alone.  Nor,  as  we  have  already  shown,  did 
the  debate  on  missions  lack  its  quota  of  trick  on  the  same 
side.  One  notable  stratagem  we  have  described  as  virtu- 
ally deciding  the  fate  of  the  two  overtures,  by  binding 
them  together.  Mr.  Hamilton  resorted  to  another,  when, 
in  the  hope  of  blackening  the  character  of  his  opponents, 
and  thus  creating  a  prejudice  against  both  them  and  their 
cause,  he  charged  them  with  dishonestly  a]~»propriating  to 
the  support  of  their  missionary  schemes  money  collected 
for  the  poor.  Dr.  Hill  was  more  ingenious ;  not  only,  he 
asserted,  were  missionary  societies  not  good,  but  even 
those  who  most  strenuously  defended  them  seemed  fully 
aware  of  the  fact.     We  again  quote : 

"  My  reverend  father,  Dr.  Erskine,"  he  said,  "  has  only  touched 
their  surface  with  delicacy  and  tenderness ;  for  his  sagacity  and 
discernment  must  have  led  him  to  perceive  that  they  would  not  hear  a 
more  critical  inspection.  Nay,  he  even  has  gone  so  far  as  to  say  that 
he  approves  of  all  the  societies  which  have  been  formed,  '  more  or 
less,' — a  confession  ichich  seems  equivalent  to  his  owning  that  he  does 
not  approve  entirely  of  any." 

The  hit  was  only  indifferently  successfid.  Dr.  Erskine 
at  once  characterized  the  inference  of  the  Principal  as 
unwarranted.  He  had  not  veiled,  he  said,  through  feelings 
of  delicacy  or  tenderness,  as  had  been  insinuated,  any  dis- 
approval of  the  missionary  societies  of  the  country  ;  for  he 
did  not  disapprove  of  them,  but  very  much  the  reverse. 
If  he  had  spoken  obscurely  regarding  them,  it  was  unwit- 
tingly, not  from  design  ;  and  some  portion  of  obscurity,  in 
a  speech  wholly  unstudied,  might,  he  hoped,  be  excused. 
In  a  second  stratagem,  of  a  still  worse  character.  Principal 
Hill  was  entirely  successful. 


184  THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS. 

The  war  of  the  first  French  Revolution  was  raging  at 
the  i^eriod  of  the  debate,  and  the  democratic  principles 
caught  by  the  people  of  Britain,  as  if  by  infection,  from 
their  volatile  neighbors,  were  now  undergoing  a  course  of 
gradual  absorption,  overmastered  by  the  intensely  national 
spirit  which  both  the  reverses  and  triumphs  of  the  conflict 
served  to  awaken.  Still,  however,  the  pest  had  not  been 
altogether  extirpated.  "  Our  neighbor's  house  was  in 
flames,  and  it  was  well,"  according  to  Burke,  "  that  the 
engines  should  occasionally  play  on  our  own."  Only  two 
years  had  elapsed  since  the  trials  of  Muir,  Palmer,  and 
Gerald  had  taken  place;  and  Braxfield  had  not  yet  ceased 
reiterating  his  somewhat  brutal  joke,  that  our  democrats 
"  would  a'  be  muckle  the  better  o'  being  hanged."  Even 
several  years  later,  the  present  Lord  President  of  the  Court 
of  Session,  then  Lord  Advocate,  could  ofticially  intimate 
to  the  sheriflf  of  Banffshire  that  a  farmer  of  that  county, 
who  had  dismissed  liis  servant  for  neglecting  his  work  in 
attending  a  volunteer  review,  should  be  "  stigmatized  and 
punished  by  the  scorn  and  contempt  of  all  respectable 
men;"  and  instruct,  further,  "that  on  the  first  French- 
man landing  in  Scotland  he  [the  former]  should  be  imme- 
diately apprehended  as  a  suspected  person;"  and  that  in 
the  event  of  his  property  being  destroyed  by  either  the 
enemy  or  the  king's  troops,  "  care  should  be  taken  to 
]Drevent  his  receiving  any  compensation  for  the  loss."  The 
temper  of  the  time  was  one  of  fear  and  suspicion  ;  minds 
of  fully  the  ordinary  strength  seemed  unhinged  by  the 
terror  of  revolution ;  and,  to  excite  their  rage  and  hatred 
against  any  newly  established  popular  society,  it  seemed 
but  necessary  to  hint  that  there  might  possibly  be  some- 
thing democratic  in  its  character  or  tendencies.  There 
were  not  a  few  of  this  conspiracy-dreaded  class  present  at 
the  time  in  tlie  Assembly,  mostly  gentlemen  of  the  law; 
and  the  reverend  Principal  thus  proceeded  to  enlist  their 
fears  full  against  the  missionary  cause.  The  stratagem 
had  at  least  the  merit  of  being  consummately  ingenious, 


THE   DEBATE    OX   MISSIONS.  185 

and,  as  we  have  already  said,  and  shall  afterwards  show,  it 
was  entirely  successful. 

"  Besides  tlie  considerations,"  he  said,  "  which  lead  us  to  augur 
unfavorably  of  these  societies  from  the  circumstances  I  have  enu- 
merated, there  is  one  argument,  drawn  from  a  consideration  of  a 
much  more  important  nature  in  itself,  because  threatening  much  more 
aioful  and  extreme  effects  than  even  these,  not,  indeed,  to  the  heathen 
or  the  missionaries,  hut  to  this  country,  to  society  at  large.  The  politi- 
cal aspect  of  the  times,  marked  with  the  turbulent  and  seditious 
attempts  of  the  evil  designing  or  the  deluded  against  our  happy 
constitution,  —  against  the  order  of  everything  we  possess  and  hold 
dear  to  us,  whether  as  citizens  or  as  men,  —  renders  it  incumbent  on 
me  to  state,  that  I  observe  with  serious  regret  not  only  many  of  the 
striking  outlines,  but  even  many  of  the  most  obnoxious  expressions, 
or  expressions  similar  to  those  which  have  been  held  with  affected 
triumph  in  the  lately  suppressed  popular  assemblies." 

The  Principal  goes  on  to  render  the  assertion  as  plausible 
as  possible,  by  quotations  from  the  regulations  and  prelim- 
inary address  of  the  society  over  which  the  venerable  Dr. 
Erskine  presided.  His  art  in  twisting  a  meaning  seems  to 
have  been  very  considerable  indeed. 

"  In  the  letter  I  have  so  often  referred  to,"  continued  the  Princi- 
pal, "  it  is  said,  '  They  [Christians]  perceive  that  their  strength  has 
been  impaired  by  division  ;  that  the  most  zealous  exertions  of  par- 
ticular denominations  have  only  had  a  partial  and  temporary  effect ; 
and  that  by  union  alone  one  obvious  cause  of  failure  may  be  com- 
pletely removed.  They  wish,  therefore,  to  make  a  grand,  unanimous 
effort ;  to  combine  the  wisdom,  the  prayers,  the  influence,  and  the 
wealth  of  all  their  brethren  in  all  parts  of  the  nation,  and  even  to 
produce  a  general  movement  of  the  Church  upon  earth!'  Again, 
'  While  we  rejoice  in  these  associations  as  proofs  that  the  desire  to 
propagate  the  gospel  is  at  present  very  generally  excited,  we  beg 
leave  strongly  to  recommend  united  exertions ;  and  we  submit  to  all 
such  societies  in  Scotland,  whether  it  will  not  be  better  to  cooperate 
than  to  act  alone.  Let  us  join  all  our  resources,  and  proceed  with 
vigor.  From  harmonious  beginnings  at  home  we  may  perhaps  be 
enabled  to  go  on  to  an  enlarged  concurrence  with  similar  societies 

16* 


186  THE   DELATE   OX   MISSIONS. 

at  a  distance,  and  in  our  day  to  revive  something  of  tlie  liberal  spirit 
of  primitive  times,  when  the  multitude  of  them  that  believed  were 
of  one  heart  and  of  one  soul.'  And  yet  again,  '  The  society  shall 
be  willing  to  correspond  with  all  sociedes  and  individuals  who  may 
have  the  same  grand  object  in  view,  and  shall  either  act  by  them- 
selves or  cooperate  with  others,  as  circumstances  shall  determine.' " 

When  ever  before  were  there  more  terrible  proofs  of 
conspiracy  adduced  !  and  was  not  Principal  Hill  quite 
justified  in  alleging  that  these  quotations  were  '■'■  fully 
sufficient,  loithout  any  addition  or  much  comment,  to  war- 
ranV  him  '•'in  calling  those  societies  highly  dangerous,  in 
their  tendency,  to  the  good  order  of  society  at  large  f"^ 
True,  it  seemed  a  rather  unlucky  circumstance  for  his  case, 
that  men  such  as  Dr.  Erskine  were  their  leading  members. 
But  then,  with  "new  members,"  he  said,  "new  views  would 
be  introduced ;  nor  was  it  unreasonable  to  dread  that  their 
common  fund  should  be  perverted  from  its  original  channel, 
and  be  made  the  means,  along  with  the  other  obnoxious 
circumstances  mentioned,  of  stirring  up  temporal  strife^ 
instead  of  promoting  spiritual  peace^ 


PART    FIFTH. 

We  are  told  by  Plutarch,  of  the  Romans  who  besieged 
Syracuse,  that  after  they  had  seen  a  few  dozen  of  their 
galleys  pitched  into  the  air  from  the  ends  of  huge  beams, 
and  a  few  hundreds  of  their  legionaries  crushed  into  the 
earth  by  immense  rocks,  they  became  so  sadly  afraid  of  the 
master  magician  who  defended  the  city,  that  if  they  only- 
spied  a  small  cord  or  piece  of  wood  above  the  walls,  they 
straightway  took  to  their  heels,  crying  out  that  "Archi- 
medes was  going  to  let  fly  some  terrible  engine  at  them." 
A  somewhat  similar  terror  seems  to  have  possessed  the 
more  strenuous  supporters  of  the  Pitt  and  Dundas  ])olicy 
in  our  own  country,  for  a  few  years  before  and  after  the 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  187 

period  of  the  debate  on  missions ;  and  it  was  to  this  feeling 
of  fear  and  suspicion,  as  we  have  said,  that  Principal  Hill 
deemed  it  wisdom  to  appeal.  At  the  distance  of  nearly 
half  a  century,  when  men's  minds  have  cooled  down,  it 
strikes  one  with  astonishment  to  see  how  very  minute  the 
cord  sometimes  w^as,  and  how  very  slender  the  beam,  that 
filled  men  of  at  least  ordinary  good  sense  with  dread  and 
suspicion.  Scarce  an  institution  could  be  established,  on 
however  limited  a  scale,  whether  economic,  educational,  or 
religious,  that  some  one  or  other  did  not  decry  as  a  revo- 
lutionary engine.  Some  became  mortally  afraid  of  benefit 
societies,  some  of  prayer-meetings,  some  of  Sunday  schools. 
Masonic  fraternities  were  deemed  hotbeds  of  sedition  every- 
where: even  parish  schools  came  to  be  suspected.  A 
country  magistrate  of  the  period,  naturally  a  benevolent 
man,  but  rabid  in  his  dread  of  revolution,  was  jjresiding 
on  one  occasion,  in  one  of  our  northern  towns,  on  a  trial 
of  some  score  of  ragged  urchins,  who,  in  sacking  a  piece  of 
planting  of  its  rowans,  had  broken  a  few  of  the  young- 
trees.  He  had  gone  through  the  case  with  great  good 
humor;  tliere  was  nothing  revolutionary  in  it#  In  pro- 
posing, however,  that  tlie  parents  of  the  culprits  should 
become  bound  for  their  behavior  in  the  future,  he  was 
seconded  by  a  brother  magistrate  of  the  town,  who  re- 
marked, half  in  joke,  that  they  had  better  also  bind  the 
young  fellows  themselves,  so  far  as  a  promise  could  bind 
them ;  and  Avho,  aware  of  their  literary  qualifications, 
actually  WTote  out  for  them  a  declaration  of  non-aggression 
for  the  time  coming,  which  he  asked  them  to  sign.  Glad 
of  the  opportunity  of  showing  they  could  write,  they  came 
forward  one  by  one,  and  adhibited  their  names,  each  suc- 
ceeding boy  in  a  style  more  clerkly  than  the  boy  that  had 
gone  before.  The  country  magistrate  stood  aghast,  for 
he  saw  conspiracy  and  sedition  in  the  accomplishment. 
"  What !  Avhat !  what ! "  he  exclaimed,  his  temper  giving 
way  for  the  first  time  during  the  course  of  the  trial,  "all 
these  ragamufiins  able   to  write!     This  must  be   put  an 


188  THE    DEBATE    ON    MISSIONS. 

instant  stop  to !     In  a  few  years  hence  we  shall  see  tbeui 
all  hung  for  high  treason." 

One  of  the  most  extreme  cases  illustrative  of  the  spirit 
of  the  time  was  perhaps  that  of  the  late  Rev.  Mr.  Lapslie, 
of  Campsie,  —  a  gentleman  who  first  introduced  himself 
to  terms  of  familiar  intimacy  with  the  unfortunate  and  not 
over-prudent  Muir,  of  Huntshill,  by  the  professed  liberality 
of  his  political  principles,  and  who,  animated  by  his  detes- 
tation of  democracy  and  his  hope  of  a  pension,  volunteered 
afterwards  his  evidence  against  him,  but  whose  testimony, 
from  the  utterly  infamous  nature  of  his  conduct,  could  not 
be  received.     The  history  of  this  man  would  exhibit  Mod- 
eratism  in  its  worst  and  most  extreme  phase.     It  may  be 
deemed  unfair,  indeed,  to  select  the  atrocities  of  one  indi- 
A'idual  as  the  characteristics  of  a  party.     If,  however,  that 
individual   was  folloioed   by    his   party ;    if,  in    cases    of 
acquittal  for  scandalous  crimes,  in  which  no  merely  secular 
court  of  the  period  would  or  could  have  concurred,  they 
suffered  him  to  act  as  their  leader;  if  his  worst  peculiar- 
ities were  but  exaggerations  of  their  own ;  if,  instead  of 
branding'his  conduct  and  casting  him  out  of  their  society, 
they  were  content  to  regard  him  as  a  useful  and  active 
partisan ;  if,   in   short,   they  homologated   his   actings  by 
making  them  to  no  very  limited  extent  their  own,  —  they 
must  be  content  that  he  should  be  regarded  as  at  least  an 
extreme  specimen  of  their  class.     For  several  years  after 
entering   on   liis    charge,   Mr.   Lapslie    bore   the    common 
Moderate  character.     He  was  known  to  be  no  bigot.     He 
appeared  occasionally  in  the  boxes  of  the  Glasgow  theatre, 
and  had,  it  was  said,  a  happy  knack  of  rendering  himself 
agreeable  at  the  tables  of  men  in  the  upper  ranks.    On  the 
determination   of  government  to  crush  the  revolutionary 
spirit  among  the  people  by  a  series  of  state  prosecutions, 
the  incumbent  of  Campsie  sprung  up  at  once  into  notoriety, 
and  volunteered,  as  we  have  said,  his  testimony  against 
Muir.     He  had  been  over-zealous,  however,  for  the  full  ac- 
complishment of  what  he  had  purposed.    He  had  attended 


THE   DEBATE    ON    MISSIONS.  189 

the  sheriffs  in  their  rounds,  collecting  evidence.  He  had 
even  hinted  to  some  of  the  witnesses,  by  way  of  refreshing 
their  memories,  that  "  berths  might  be  provided  for  them 
under  government."  When  the  trial  came  on,  his  testimony 
w^as  objected  to,  on  the  score  that  he  was  a  party  deeply 
interested  in  the  case;  and,  to  his  surprise  and  signal 
mortification,  the  objection  was  sustained  by  the  public 
prosecutor.  Muir,  in  addressing  the  jury  empanelled  to 
try  him,  solemnly  pledged  himself  that,  if  acquitted,  he, 
in  turn,  would  become  Mr.  Lapslie's  prosecutor,  and  prove 
against  him,  by  a  cloud  of  witnesses,  practices  —  nay, 
crimes  —  which  he  at  that  stage  forbore  to  characterize. 
Though  thus  rejected  as  a  witness,  however,  the  minister 
was  not  altogether  disappointed.  His  services,  though  not 
very  honorable,  had  been  at  least  very  zealously  tendered : 
they  had  attracted  the  notice  of  Pitt ;  and  a  pension  was 
granted  him  almost  immediately  after  the  trial,  which, 
considerably  more  than  thirty  years  subsequent,  his  widow 
continued  to  enjoy.  On  the  introduction  of  the  militia 
act,  so  unpopular  in  Scotland,  Mr.  Lapslie  exerted  himself 
to  give  it  effect  in  his  own  parish  of  Campsie  with  such 
hearty  good-will,  that  some  of  his  jjarishioners,  to  show 
their  gratitude  and  resj^ect,  set  fire  to  his  outhouses  in  the 
night-time,  and  burnt  them  to  the  ground.  He  distin- 
guished himself  above  all  his  fellows  by  his  active  hostility 
to  Sunday  schools  and  home  and  foreign  missions,  "believ- 
ing them,  in  common  with  many  other  members  of  the 
Church,"  says  a  wn-iter  of  the  present  day,  who  has  sketched 
an  outline  of  his  biography,  "  to  be  deeply  tainted  with 
democracy."  The  accusers  of  our  Saviour  charged  him 
with  rebellion  against  Caesar;  we  question  whether  there 
"were  any  of  them  more  in  earnest  than  Mr.  Lapslie.  The 
latest  notice  of  this  singular  divine  which  we  have  yet 
seen  is  to  be  found  in  "  Peter's  Letters  to  his  Kinsfolk." 
We  there  find  him  drawm  as  a  gray-headed  old  man, 
addressing  the  General  Assembly  in  strains  the  most 
impassioned:    "tearing    his    waistcoat    open,    baring    his 


190  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

breast  as  if  he  had  scars  to  show  ;  bellowing,  sobbing, 
weeping;"  and  finally  sitting  down,  "trembling  all  to  his 
finger-ends,  like  an  exhausted  Pythoness."  What  was  it 
that  had  moved  the  old  man,  and  why  did  he  rave,  and 
weep,  and  shake  his  gray  locks?  He  had  been  engaged, 
soul,  body,  and  spirit,  in  the  defence  of  a  Moderate  clergy- 
man accused  of  "illicit  intercourse  with  his  housekeeper," 
and  who  fared  none  the  worse  in  consequence  of  having 
his  case  tried  at  a  period  when  it  was  impossible,  in  the 
General  Assembly,  to  convict  Moderate  ministers  of  crime. 

We  have  been  indulging  in  an  episode ;  but  it  is  one 
which  serves  to  illustrate  the  temper  of  the  time,  and 
enables  us  to  add  to  our  series  of  sketches  an  additional 
portrait.  Moderatism  has  often  pointed  to  its  men  of 
science  and  literature  —  its  poets,  philosophers,  and  histo- 
rians ;  the  niemoiy  of  such  long  outlives  that  of  their 
humbler  contemporaries.  But  it  is  w^ell  to  remember  that 
it  was  not  of  literature  and  science  that  the  staple  of  the 
party  was  composed.  It  is  well  to  enter  into  an  examina- 
tion of  its  coarser  ingredients ;  to  know  somewhat  not 
only  of  the  gifted  leaders  who  contended  against  the  cause 
of  missions  and  Sunday  schools,  but  also  of  the  humbler 
men-at-arms  who  fought  under  them  with  a  zeal  and  hearti- 
ness in  no  respect  inferior  to  their  own.  The  deep  cloud 
of  moral  and  spiritual  deatli  which  for  a  century  brooded 
over  our  country,  withering  every  blossom  of  hope  and 
promise,  had  its  upper  sunlit  folds  of  purple  and  gold,  to 
catch  and  charm  the  eye  of  the  distant  spectator;  but  to 
know  it  in  its  true  character,  it  was  necessary  to  descend 
to  where  its  lower  volumes  brooded  over  the  blighted 
surface,  and  there  to  acquaint  one's  self  with  its  sulphure- 
ous stench,  its  mildew-dispensing  damps,  its  chills,  and  its 
darkness. 

Some  such  introduction,  too,  is  necessary  to  enable  the 
reader  either  to  enter  fully  into  the  character  of  Principal 
Hill's  stratagem,  or  rightly  to  appreciate  the  spirit  of  the 
very    singular   political   speech    which   it   elicited.     The 


THE    DEBATE    ON    MISSIONS.    .  191 

speaker  was  a  young  advocate  named  David  Boyle,  ruling 
elder  for  the  burgh  of  Irvine.  We  are  inclined  to  hold 
that  he  could  have  been  animated  by  no  real  zeal  against 
missions ;  that  it  was  his  head,  not  his  heart,  which  was 
at  fault.  A  bit  of  cord  hung  over  the  wall;  a  piece 
of  wood  had  appeared;  the  wily  Principal  had  called 
out,  "A  revolutionary  engine!  a  revolutionary  engine!" 
There  were  certainly  many  playing  off  at  the  time ;  and 
the  zealous  advocate,  infected  by  the  general  terror,  had 
taken  the  representation  too  readily  on  trust.  We  insert 
his  speech  entire  : 

"  I  rise,  Moderator,  impressed  with  a  sense  of  the  alarming  and 
dangerous  tendency  of  the  measures  proposed  in  the  overtures  on  your 
table,  —  overtures  ichich  I  cannot  too  strongly,  which  the  Hou^e  cannot 
too  strongly,  oppose,  and  which,  I  trust,  all  the  loyal  and  loell-affected 
members  loiU.  he  unanimous  in  opposing.  If,  however,  I  should  stand 
single  with  the  two  reverend  Doctors  and  the  gentleman  who  made 
the  motion,  I  should  tliis  night  go  down  to  divide  the  House.  Sir, 
numerous  societies  of  people  are  at  all  times  alarming ;  but  at  this 
time  particularly  so,  whatever  be  the  professions  on  which  they  are 
formed,  or  the  pretexts  they  hold  out  to  the  world.  The  general 
professed  object  of  the  present  societies  is,  indeed,  good,  and  at  a 
proper  season  would  merit  our  countenance  ;  hut  there  is  nothing 
besides  this  general  object  at  all  good  about  them;  all  the  other  circum- 
stances respecting  them  are  had  ;  for  I  am  free  to  assert  —  and  I  will 
maintain  it  in  the  face  of  any  member  of  this  Assembly  —  that  all  the 
societies  lohich  have  of  late  years  existed  in  this  country  have  been  more 
or  less  connected  iviih  politics.  Yes,  sir,  I  do  say  that  the  associations 
of  the  people  formed  in  various  parts  of  the  kingdom  to  petition  for 
the  abolition  of  the  slave-trade,  however  good  their  design,  and 
whether  or  not  immediately  arising  from  politics,  did,  at  any  rate,  lay 
the  foundation  of  the  political  societies  which  have  since  disturbed  the 
peace  and  tranquillity  of  the  country,  and  have  cost  so  much  trouble 
and  difficulty  to  be  suppressed.  Still,  however,  the  people  meet 
under  the  pretext  of  spreading  Christianity  among  the  heathen. 
Observe,  sir,  they  are  affiliated,  they  have  a  common  object,  they 
correspond  loith  each  other,  they  look  for  assistance  from  foreign 
countries,  in  the  very  language  of  many  of  the  seditious  societies. 
Above  all,  it  is  to  be  marked,  they  have  a  common  fund.     Where  is 


192  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

the  security  that  the  money  of  this  fund  will  not,  as  the  reverend 
Principal  said,  be  used  for  very  different  purposes  from  the  professed 
ones  ?  If  cinij  man  says  that  the  societies  have  not  this  connection  and 
tendency,  he  says  the  thing  that  is  not.  It  now,  therefore,  becomes  us 
as  much  as  possible  to  discourage  numerous  societies,  for  Avhatever 
purposes  ;  /or,  he  the  object  what  it  may,  they  are  all  equally  had. 
And  as  for  those  missionary  societies,  I  do  aver,  that  since  it  is  to  be 
apprehended  that  their  funds  may  be  in  time,  nay,  certainly  will  &e, 
turned  against  the  constitution,  so  it  is  the  bounden  duty  of  this  House 
to  give  the  overtures  recommending  them  our  most  serious  disappro-  • 
hation,  and  our  immediate,  most  decisive  opposition." 

Yery  extraordinary,  surely,  regarded  as  the  production 
of  a  man  still  living!  It  has  so  much  of  the  true  rust  of 
antiquity  about  it,  that  to  associate  it  with  the  present  age 
by  a  link  so  unequivocal  as  the  continued  working-day 
world  existence  of  the  speaker,  does  violence  in  no  small 
degree  to  the  imagination.  But  it  must  have  originated, 
as  we  have  said,  wholly  in  misconception  and  mistake,  and 
should  be  regarded  rather  as  an  etfect  of  the  disreputable 
stratagem  of  Principal  Hill,  operating  on  a  mind  blinded 
by  its  fears  and  open  to  suspicion  on  only  one  side,  than 
as  the  result  of  spontaneous  conviction.  We  are  pretty 
sure  that  the  speaker,  rendered  wiser  by  the  additional 
experience  of  forty-five  years,  would  now  be  the  very  first 
to  repudiate  the  sentiments  which  it  expresses.  He  would 
deal  by  them  as  Knox  and  Luther  dealt  by  the  idolatrous 
tenets  which  in  the  days  of  their  extreme  youth  they  had 
deemed  it  their  duty  to  hold.  A  remark,  however,  which 
seems  naturally  to  grow  out  of  the  subject  may  not  be 
deemed  either  irreverent  or  ill-timed ;  and  we  shall  intro- 
duce it  by  an  anecdote. 

It  is  recorded  of  the  celebrated  Lord  Monboddo,  that, 
when  the  great  Douglas  case  was  brought  for  judgment 
before  the  Court  of  Session,  he  descended  from  the  bench, 
and,  taking  his  place  beside  the  clerk,  there  delivered  his 
opinion.  What  could  have  moved  him  ?  for  he  assigned 
no  reason  for  the  step.     He  simply  rose  from  beside  his 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  198 

brethren,  and  came  down.  Men  of  correct  moral  senti- 
ment had  but  to  consult  their  feelings  in  order  to  dis- 
cover his  lordship's  motives.  It  was  remembered  that, 
previous  to  his  elevation,  he  had  been  counsel  in  the  case 
for  one  of  the  parties.  It  was  known  that,  in  common  with 
all  engaged  in  it,  he  had  felt  an  intense  interest  in  the 
issue,  of  which  he  could  not  divest  lumself,  now  that  he 
was  counsel  no  longer.  And  so  it  was  at  once  inferred 
that,  feeling  himself  rather  a  party  than  a  judge,  lie  had 
descended  from  tlie  judge's  seat,  determined  that,  since  he 
had  now,  in  virtue  of  his  office,  to  record  judgment  in  the 
case,  he  should  do  so  on  the  counsel's  level,  and,  as  it 
were,  under  protest  of  his  own  conscience.  Believing  his 
decision  to  be  entirely  just,  he  was  yet  sensible  of  an  under- 
current of  prejudice  powerful  enough  to  warp  his  better 
judgment.  He  took  this  mode  of  showing  that  he  icas 
sensible  of  it ;  and  though  it  might,  doubtless,  have  been 
better  for  him  to  have  declined  giving  an  opinion  in  the 
case  at  all,  it  must  be  confessed  that,  since  he  did  give  it, 
it  was  well  it  should  have  been  under  circumstances  so 
marked. 

Lord  Monboddo  carried  his  prejudices  with  him  from 
the  bar  to  the  bench ;  and  he  felt  that  he  did.  Are  the 
majority  of  our  Lords  of  Session  in  the  present  day  men 
of  stronger  minds  than  Monboddo,  or  possessed  of  a  more 
complete  control  over  their  predilections  and  their  antipa- 
thies? If  the  question  cannot  be  answered  otherwise  than 
in  the  negative,  is  it  possible  to  forget  that  in  the  present 
struggle  not  a  few  of  our  Lords  of  Session  are  as  certainly 
parties  in  one  character  as  they  are  judges  in  another? 
We  do  not  refer  to  tlie  controversy  in  its  more  obvious 
aspect  —  as  a  colHsion  between  two  courts.  In  that  aspect 
the  Lords  of  Session  may  indeed  be  described  as  parties, 
and  their  decisions  as  decisions  in  fixvor  of  their  own  court. 
But  we  refer  to  it  in  a  more  emphatic  sense  —  as  a  con- 
troversy between  two  great  principles,  Moderatism  and 
Evangelism,  and  to  the  well-known  fact,  that  the  greater 

17 


194  THE    DEBATE    OX   MISSIONS. 

part  of  the  men  who  now,  in  the  character  of  judges, 
record  their  decisions  against  the  latter  principle,  have 
zealously  contended  against  it  as  partisans  in  the  charac- 
ter of  ruling  elders.  They  have  passed  hot  from  their 
debates  in  the  General  Assembly  to  their  seats  in  the 
Court  of  Session,  and  their  findings  in  one  character  agree 
entirely  with  their  votes  in  another.  We  are  far  from 
impugning  tlieir  motives  in  either  capacity.  We  doubt  not 
they  have  been  thoroughly  conscientious ;  as  much  so 
when  contending  on  unequal  terms  with  Andrew  Thom- 
son, and  made  to  feel  that  he  was  not  only  an  abler  man, 
but  also  a  better  lawyer,  than  most  of  themselves,  as  when 
pronouncing  judgment  in  the  Auchterarder  case;  as  much 
so  when  opposing  themselves  to  the  overtures  on  missions,- 
as  when  granting  interdicts  against  preaching  the  gospel 
and  administering  the  sacraments  at  the  instance  of  the 
clergymen  of  Strathbogie.  We  doubt  not  they  have 
decided  conscientiously.  We  doubt  not  that  Monboddo 
decided  conscientiously  in  the  Douglas  case ;  but  Mon- 
boddo could  himself  fear,  that,  though  he  judged  honestly, 
there  were  yet  disturbing  circumstances  that  might  lead 
him  to  judge  erroneously:  and  we  are  convinced  the 
public  would  think  none  the  worse  of  the  mnjority  of  the 
Lords  of  Session  were  they  to  manifest  in  some  slight 
degree  a  corresponding  fear. 

The  remarks  of  Mr.  Boyle  called  up  Dr.  Erskine,  im- 
willing  as  he  was,  he  said,  again  to  encroach  on  the  time 
of  the  Assembly.  He  could  not  understand  why  all  asso- 
ciations of  the  people,  however  diverse  the  purposes  for 
which  they  had  been  established,  should  be  treated  thus 
with  equal  severity;  or  on  what  ]mnci\)\Q  p)^ope7'  should 
be  confounded  with  impro2?er  objects,  from  their  merely 
possessing  the  common  circumstance  of  being  pursued, 
with  a  view  to  their  accomplishment,  by  bodies,  not  indi- 
viduals. What  was  there  in  the  mere  circumstance  of 
union,  of  force  enough  to  convert  good  into  evil  ?  lie 
had   yet  to  learn  that  societies  formed   in  the  cause  of 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  195 

humanity  tended  to  render  the  minds  of  men  turbulent 
and  seditious ;  or  that  the  quiet  of  the  state  couhl  be  in 
any  degree  endangered  by  deliberations  on  the  best  pos- 
sible means  of  Christianizing  the  heathen,  or  by  discussions 
regarding  the  more  })romising  fields  of  missionary  exertion. 
Good  government  had  nothing  to  dread  from  religion ; 
irreligion,  on  the  other  hand,  was  the  worst  foe  it  had  to 
combat.  He  proceeded  to  say,  in  language  which  we 
have  already  quoted,  that  he  acknowledged,  and  gloried 
in  acknowledging,  himself  a  member  of  the  Slave  Abolition 
Society;  that  in  no  degree,  however,  on  that  account,  was 
he  the  less  attached  to  the  constitution  under  which  he 
lived.  He  believed  he  had  given  at  least  as  many  proofs 
of  his  regard  for  the  peace  of  the  land  as  the  gentlemen 
opposite ;  and  he  was  prepared,  he  trusted,  in  his  humble 
sphere,  to  make  as  many  and  as  great  sacrilices  to  preserve 
it  inviolate.  He  had  no  wish,  he  said,  to  see  the  people 
becoming  disputatious  politicians ;  for  he  had  seen  their 
loose  political  speculations  serving  but  to  waste  and  dissi- 
jDate  their  minds,  and  thus  doing  them  harm  without 
producing  any  counterbalance  of  good.  Nor  was  he  at 
all  partial  to  the  late  democratic  societies ;  some  of  them 
served  only  to  show  him  how  a  few  cunning  men  may 
lead  multitudes  astray.  The  pretended  analogy,  however, 
between  these  lately  suppressed  political  associations  and 
the  lately  established  missionary  societies  was  by  much 
too  fir  strained  to  be  just.  The  one  class  had  followed 
the  other  in  the  order  of  time;  but  was  there  the  slightest 
attempt  to  show  that  in  this  succession  there  was  aught 
akin  to  the  relation  of  cause  and  eifect?  Exactly  the 
reverse  was  the  case;  and,  to  convince  themselves  thor- 
oughly that  it  was  so,  they  had  but  to  examine  into  the 
nature  of  the  ingredients  of  which  the  associations  and 
societies  were  resj)ectively  composed.  He  was  very  sure, 
for  his  own  part,  that  he  saw  none  of  their  violent  political 
reformers  stepping  forward  to  take  part  in  the  missionary 
cause.    He  was  equally  sure  that  those  who  exerted  them- 


196  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

selves  in  it  most  were  men  remarkable  for  their  simplicity* 
and  purity  of  life,  and  from  whom  no  good  government 
could  have  any  cause  of  alarm.  Dr.  Erskine  sat  down, 
and  did  not  again  mingle  in  the  debate.  The  event  deter- 
mined that  he  should  take  no  peculiar  interest  in  missions 
as  a  minister  of  tlie  Church  of  Scotland ;  but  not  the  less 
on  that  account  did  he  labor  in  their  behalf  as  a  minister 
of  the  Church  of  Christ;  and  his  last  work  on  earth,  as 
w^e  have  already  intimated,  was  the  preparation  of  a 
pamphlet  —  one  of  a  series  —  suited  to  draw  the  attention 
of  the  country  to  the  good  which  they  were  the  means  of 
producing  abroad.  His  remark  with  regard  to  the  fact 
that  he  saw  none  of  the  more  violent  political  reformers 
taking  part  in  the  missionary  cause  is  a  shrewd  one.  We 
have  heard  Chartist  sermons  in  our  time,  and  have 
described  the  divinity  of  the  class  as  a  sort  of  Moderatism 
possessed,  —  as  composed  of  the  commonplaces  of  a  tame 
and  inefficient  morality,  that  never  made  any  one  more 
moral,  shaken  into  uncouth  activity  by  the  eccentric  ener- 
gies of  the  revolutionary  spirit.  One  of  their  preachers 
we  heard  descant  on  missions.  What  particular  view  did 
he  take  of  them?  or  what  is  the  opinion  formed  regarding 
them  by  the  lay  theologians  of  Chartism  ?  Exactly  the 
Moderate  view,  as  recorded  in  the  debate  of  1796.  The 
preacher  denounced  them  as  singularly  absurd ;  nay,  more, 
he  deemed  it  little  better  than  a  crime  to  waste  the 
resources  of  the  country  in  benefiting  foreigners,  when 
there  was  so  much  to  be  done  in  our  own  country. 
"Charity,  child,  charity!"  said  Mrs.  Tabitha  Bramble,  in 
entering  her  protest  against  the  benevolent  donation  of 
her  brother,  honest  Matthew, — "Charity  begins  at  home; 
these  twenty  pounds  would  have  bought  me  a  complete 

set  of  silks,  head-dress,  pinners,  and ."  —  "Missions!" 

said   the    Chartist    orator,  —  "missions!  —  why,    half  the 

money  expended  on  missions  would  win  us  the  charter." 

The    debate   hastened   to    its    conclusion.      The    Rev. 

Messrs.    Johnstone,    of    Crossmichael,    and    Shepherd,    of 


THE   DEBATE   ON   MISSIONS.  197 

Muirkirk,  together  with  a  Mr.  Dickson,  ruling  elder  for 
the  Presbytery  of  Biggar,  spoke  in  favor  of  the  overtures. 
Dr.  William  Taylor,  of  Glasgow,  and  the  Rev.  Robert 
Knox,  of  Larbert,  were  strenuous  against  them.  Dr.  Tay- 
lor urged  the  old  argument :  there  was  a  great  deal  still 
to  be  done  at  home,  —  all  the  more,  he  said,  in  consequence 
of  the  much  that  had  lately  been  undone  by  the  writings 
of  Paine.  He  urged,  therefore,  that  they  should  deter- 
minedly oppose  themselves  to  the  Age  of  Reason  and  the 
overtures,  and  offer  up  prayers  for  the  spread  of  the  gos- 
pel. Knox,  a  gentleman  who  had  been  settled  in  his  parish 
by  the  military,  was  content  to  denounce  the  indelicacy 
shown  by  members  friendly  to  the  missionary  cause,  in 
taking  it  somehow  for  granted  that  there  was  more  of 
conscience  in  supporting  than  in  opposing  it.  The  As- 
sembly divided  ;  and,  in  a  house  of  one  hundred  and  two 
members,  the  overtures  were  dismissed  by  a  majority  of 
fourteen. 

The  deposition  of  the  Strathbogie  clergymen  was  car- 
ried, in  a  house  of  three  hundred  and  forty-seven,  by  a 
majority  of  ninety-seven.  At  least  twice  the  number  that 
voted  in  the  Assembly  of  1796,  on  both  sides,  attended 
the  last  extraordinary  meeting  of  Commission,  to  record 
their  resolutions  on  one  side.  The  fact  is  no  unimportant 
one.  It  shows  that  the  languor  and  indifterency  of  the 
middle  period  of  the  Church's  history  is  gone ;  that  not 
only  the  policy,  but  also  the  strength  and  energy,  of  her 
earlier  time  has  been  revived.  Nor  has  the  deepening 
interest  been  restricted  to  members  of  Assembly,  or  even 
to  the  Church's  ofRce-bearers.  The  heart  of  the  people 
has  been  stirred.  Dr.  M'Crie  asked,  some  eight  or  ten 
years  ago,  in  reference  to  the  widely-spread  apathy  which 
prevailed  even  then  among  the  people  regarding  the  coun- 
sels of  the  Church,  "Where  were  the  fervent  supplications 
for  the  countenance  and  direction  of  Heaven  in  the  delib- 
erations of  the  Assembly,  which  were  wont  to  resound  of 
old  from  the  most  distant  glens  and  mountains  of  Scot- 

17* 


198  THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS. 

land?"  We  can  now  reply  to  the  query  in  other  terms 
than  the  Doctor  did  then.  Many  a  prayer-meeting  was 
held  in  the  thousand  parishes  of  Scotland  on  the  night  of 
the  Great  Meeting  in  Edinburgh,  and  there  ascended 
many  a  fervent  petition  from  the  truly  excellent  of  the 
country  in  behalf  of  their  endangered  Church.  In  one 
northern  semi-Highland  parish,  that  reclines  to  the  south 
under  the  evening  shadow  of  the  huge  Ben-wevis,  three 
several  meetings  of  the  "men"  of  the  district,  —  hoary- 
headed  patriarchs,  on  the  extreme  edge  of  life,  —  attended 
by  numbers  of  the  young,  the  fruit  of  a  recent  revival, 
were  held  on  that  night,  and  the  time  of  prayer  was  pro- 
longed from  the  fill  of  evening  to  the  break  of  day.  Our 
opponents  may  think  very  meanly  of  zeal  of  this  character 
assuming  thus  the  form  of  earnest  prayer;  but  they  must 
be  profoundly  ignorant  if  they  think  meanly  of  it  as  an 
element  of  strenoth  and  determination. 

The  overtures  on  missions  were  negatived  mainly  on  the 
argument  —  Ave  employ  the  words  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  Hamil- 
ton—  that  it  was  "improper  and  absurd  to  propagate  the 
gospel  abroad  while  there  remained  a  single  individual  at 
home  without  the  means  of  religious  knowledge."  Only 
two  years  after,  in  direct  violation  of  the  Barrier  Act,  an 
overture  originating  with  tlie  Moderate  party,  which  inca- 
j^acitated  presbyteries  from  sanctioning  the  erection  of 
chapels  of  ease,  passed  into  a  law.  Moderatism  could  com- 
mand majorities  in  the  Assembly,  but  not  in  all  the  j^res- 
byteries  of  the  Church ;  and  to  the  Assembly,  therefore, 
by  this  act,  was  reserved  the  exclusive  right  of  erecting 
chapels.  What  was  the  object  of  the  measure?  "To  pre- 
vent," says  a  Church  historian  of  the  present  day  [Dr. 
Hetherington],  "  the  erection  of  chapels  of  ease  in  any 
dangerous  place  wdiere  Evangelism  was  already  strong," 
and  to  discourage  the  system  of  Church  extension  gener- 
ally. Tiie  party  would  not  give  the  gosjiel  to  the  heathen 
because  there  was  much  to  do  at  home ;  and  they  then 
discovered   that  they  could   not  give  it  to  the  people  at 


THE   DEBATE    ON   MISSIONS.  199 

home  because  it  interfered  with  their  policy.  But  the 
Moderatisin  of  the  present  day  has  nothing  in  common, 
say  men  such  as  the  Rev.  Mr.  Robertson,  of  Ellon,  with 
the  Moderatism  of  forty  years  ago.  Men  of  such  respect- 
able calibre  might  show  just  a  little  more  sense  by  select- 
ing positions  just  a  little  more  tenable.  The  point  is 
capable  of  demonstration,  in  even  an  arithmetical  form. 
The  statistics  of  missionary  exertion  in  connection  with 
the  schemes  of  the  Church  establish  the  disputed  identity 
of  the  party,  and  the  fixed  character  of  its  tenets.  What 
principle  is  it  that,  when  it  dare  no  longer  oppose  itself  to 
foreign  missions,  contents  itself  with  doing  nothing  in 
their  behalf?  The  same  Moderatism  which  so  powerfully 
exerted  itself  against  missions  in  the  past.  What  j^i'inci- 
ple  was  operative  in  the  atrocity  of  Marnoch  ?  The  same 
Moderatism  whose  forced  settlements  in  the  last  century 
desolated  our  national  Establishment,  and  robbed  her  of 
one-third  of  her  people.  What  principle  in  the  present 
day  do  we  find  loudest  in  denouncing  the  erection  of  our 
quoad  saci^a  parishes?  That  same  Moderatism  which  set 
itself  so  insidiously  at  an  earlier  period  to  prevent  the 
erection  of  chapels  of  ease.  What  principle  demanded  of 
the  State,  on  a  late  occasion,  in  terms  which  could  not  be 
misunderstood,  the  ejection  from  the  Church  of  all  among 
its  ministers  who  took  part  with  the  iDeople?  The  same 
Moderatism  which  so  ruthlessly  secured  in  the  past  the 
ejection  of  Gillespie  and  the  Erskines.  But  we  feel  our- 
selves engaged  in  an  idle  task.  The  point  in  reality  is 
not  a  disputed  one. 


THE 


RIGHTS  OF  THE  CHRISTIAN  PEOPLE. 


THE  TWO  PARTIES  IN  THE  CHURCH  OF  SCOTLAND. 

The  following  formed  the  leading  article  in  the  first  number  of 
"  The  Witness,"  which  was  published  on  the  15th  of  January,  1840. 
The  succeeding  papers  are  compiled  from  subsequent  numbers  of 
that  journal.  —  Ed. 

We  enter  upon  our  labors  at  a  period  emphatically  mo- 
mentous,—  at  the  commencement,  it  is  probable,  of  one 
of  those  important  eras,  never  forgotten  by  a  country, 
which  influence  for  ages  the  condition  and  character  of  the 
people,  and  from  which  the  events  of  their  future  history 
take  color  and  form.  We  enter,  too,  at  a  time  when,  with 
few  exceptions,  our  Scottish  contemporaries  in  the  same 
field — unable,  it  would  seem,  to  lead,  and  unwilling  to 
follow  —  neither  guide  the  opinions  of  the  great  bulk  of 
their  countrymen,  nor  echo  their  sentiments.  Strange  as 
it  may  seem,  it  is  a  certain  fact,  which  in  the  nature  of 
things  must  be  every  day  becoming  more  and  more  obvi- 
ous, that  on  one  of  the  most  important  questions  ever 
agitated  in  Scotland  the  people  and  the  newspaper  press 
have  taken  opposite  sides. 

A  few  simple  remarks  on  the  point  at  issue  may  show, 
more  conclusively  than  any  direct  avowal,  the  part  which 
we  ourselves  deem  it  our  duty  to  take.     There  are  parties 


THE   TWO   PARTIES    IN   THE    CHURCH    OF    SCOTLAND.       201 

which  continue  to  bear  their  first  names  long  after  they 
have  abandoned  their  original  principles  ;  and  the  historian, 
in  tracing  their  progress,  has  to  regulate  his  definitions  by 
his  dates.  There  are  parties,  on  the  contrary,  which  remain 
unchanged  for  ages.  The  followers  of  Wesley  are  in  every 
respect  in  the  present  day  what  they  were  when  their 
extraordinary  leader  first  organized  their  society.  There  is, 
on  the  other  hand,  a  section  of  our  Scotch  Seceders  who 
see  nothing  to  fear  from  the  counsels  or  the  increase  of 
Popery,  and  who  can  compliment  the  Gowdies  and  Simp- 
sons of  the  time  on  the  policy  which  drove  Fisher  and 
the  Erskines  out  of  the  Church.  But  the  remark  is  exem- 
plified at  least  equally  well  by  two  antagonist  bodies  which 
for  the  last  century  and  a  half  have  composed  the  same 
corporation.  The  differences  of  the  contending  parties 
within  the  Church  of  Scotland  arise  solely  from  the  cir- 
cumstance that  the  one  retains  its  original  principles,  and 
the  other  has  given  them  up;  nor  is  it  at  all  improbable 
that  it  shall  be  decided  by  the  issue  of  the  present  conflict 
whether  the  Church  shall  continue  to  unite  its  old  char- 
acter to  its  old  name,  or  whether  for  the  future  it  shall 
retain  the  name  only. 

The  evidence  which  establishes  the  thorough  identity  of 
the  popular  party  with  the  original  Church  will  be  found 
to  lie  very  much  on  the  surface.  The  hereditary  sympa- 
thies and  dislikes  of  the  Scotch  people  are  strikingly  cor- 
roborative of  the  facts  furnished  by  history.  Dr.  Cook  is 
well-nigh  as  decided  on  the  point  as  Dr.  M'Crie.  The 
Churchmen  of  Glasgow  who  lately  commemorated  the 
triumph  of  Presbyterianism  in  the  days  of  Henderson,  are 
at  one  with  the  Dean  of  Faculty.  The  satires  of  Burns, 
and  the  David  Deans  of  the  novelist,  add  weight  to  the 
testimony  of  the  first  Seceders.  Now,  it  is  obvious  that 
the  unchanged  must  possess  a  mighty  advantage  over  the 
transmuted  party,  —  the  advantage  of  a  well-defined  and 
long-sustained  character.  They  have  been  thoroughly 
known  to  the  people  of  Scotland  for  the  last  three  centu- 


202  THE   TWO   PARTIES 

ries.  The  Chalmerses  and  Gordons  of  the  nineteenth 
century  agree  in  their  theolog}^  and  their  views  of  Church 
government  witli  the  Witherspoons  and  Dr.  Erskines  of 
the  eighteenth ;  these  again  with  the  Hendersons  and 
Rutherfords  of  the  seventeentli ;  and  these  with  the  Knoxes 
and  Melvilles  of  tlie  sixteenth.  But  we  find  no  such  con- 
sistency in  their  o]>))onents.  Tlieir  sentiments  have  ever 
agreed  with  those  of  the  age;  nor  have  they  differed  more 
in  many  respects  from  the  first  fathers  of  our  Church  than 
from  their  immediate  predecessors  on  the  unpopular  side. 
Dr.  Bryce  is  not  at  one  in  his  religious  beliefs  with  Dr. 
M'Gill,  of  Ayr,  however  closely  he  may  resemble  him  in 
his  views  of  Church  polity;  nor  does  Mr.  Pirie  approxi- 
mate, in  more  than  his  dread  of  such  irregularities  as  the 
revival  at  Kilsyth,  and  his  abhorrence  of  the  popular  voice, 
to  the  eulogist  of  Gibbon  and  Hume.  The  minority  who 
oppose  the  veto  in  1840  differ  from  the  majority  who  first 
declared  in  1784  that  they  no  longer  regarded  patronage 
as  a  grievance  ;  for,  while  the  one,  in  accordance  with  the 
skepticism  of  the  age,  would  fiiin  have  abrogated  the  Con- 
fession of  Faith  itself,  the  other  restrict  their  hostility  to  our 
books  of  discipline  only ;  nor,  in  passing  upwards,  can  we 
entirely  identify  the  antagonists  of  Gillespie  and  the  Ers- 
kines with  the  Churchmen  who  in  a  former  age  could  so 
easily  accommodate  their  conscience  to  the  demands  of 
Charles  at  the  Restoration.  Some  few  general  features  the 
party  have  all  along  retained.  They  have  ever  been  favor- 
ably regarded  by  the  men  who  derive  their  religion  from 
the  statute-book,  and  have  ever  secured  to  themselves  the 
jealous  dislike  of  our  Christian  people.  Nor  will  it  appear 
a  mere  coincidence,  when  we  consider  how  naturally  the 
same  opinions  and  sentiments  j^ropagate  themselves  for 
ages  in  the  same  locality,  that,  v/ith  but  one  solitary  excep- 
tion, the  predecessors  of  the  seven  suspended  ministers, 
who  have  so  promptly  accommodated  themselves  to  the 
encroachments  of  the  Court  of  Session,  should  have  yielded 
an   obedience  equally  prompt  to  the   unhappy  act  which 


IN    THE    CHURCH    OF    SCOTLAND.  203 

overturned  Presbyterian  ism  in  Scotland,  and  led  to  the 
longest  and  bloodiest  persecution  ever  endured  by  the 
Scottish  Church.  It  is,  however,  of  the  popular  party 
alone  that  the  experience  of  the  country  has  been  con- 
tinuous and  uniform,  and  respecting  which  the  testimony  of 
any  one  age  may  serve  for  that  of  all  the  others.  In  seasons 
of  tranquillity  it  has  ever  constituted  that  portion  of  the 
Reformed  Church  in  Scotland  which  has  given  to  the 
character  of  the  people  the  stamp  and  impress  of  a  pure 
Christianity;  in  the  day  of  trouble  and  persecution  it  has 
constituted  the  whole  of  it.  There  is  a  marked  difference 
between  the  fixed  essential  stamina  of  the  human  frame 
and  those  flying  humors  which  add  mightily  to  its  bulk  at 
one  period,  and  enter  into  the  composition  of  no  part  of 
it  at  another. 

Here,  then,  on  a  distinction  as  obvious  as  it  is  important, 
we  take  our  stand.  The  cause  of  the  unchanged  party  in 
the  Church  is  that  of  the  Church  itself;  it  is  that  of  the 
people  of  Scotland,  and  the  people  know  it;  it  was  the 
cause  of  their  fathers,  and  the  fathers  of  the  Reformation; 
it  is  the  cause  of  a  pure,  efticient,  unmodified  Christianity. 
And  the  cause  opposed  to  it  is  exactly  the  reverse  of  all 
this.  We  appeal  to  the  people,  to  history,  to  the  New 
Testament.  We  appeal  to  even  our  opponents.  We  urge 
them  to  say  whether,  in  the  expressive  language  of  Dr. 
M'Crie,  the  cry  which  now  echoes  throughout  the  country 
be  not  the  identical  "  cry  which  has  not  ceased  to  be  heard 
in  Scotland  for  nearly  three  hundred  years  "  ?  We  request 
of  them  sincerely  to  consider  their  present  position,  as 
illustrated  and  determined  by  the  history  of  the  Church. 
Among  what  party  (in  the  pages  of  Calderwood  and 
Wodrow,  for  instance)  do  they  recognize  their  types  and 
representatives,  and  in  what  place  and  attitude  do  they 
find  the  types  and  representatives  of  the  body  to  which 
they  are  opposed?  History  is  more  than  usually  clear  and 
definite  on  the  point :  it  is  one  of  those  as  to  which  the 
testimony  of  the  present  age  regarding  the  past  anticipates 


204  THE    TWIiSr    PRESBYTERIES    OF    STRATHBOGIE. 

that  of  the  future  re2:arding  the  present.  It  would  be  no 
overbohl  matter  to  class  the  John  Frosts  of  our  own  times 
with  tlie  Jack  Cades  of  the  time  of  Henry  VI.,  or  to 
compare  the  part  taken  by  the  Mayor  of  Newport  in  the 
late  riots  to  tliat  taken  by  the  Mayor  of  London  in  the 
disturbance  of  Wat  Tyler.  There  are  general  similarities 
of  conduct  and  circumstances  which  occur  to  every  one, 
and  which  constitute  the  simpler  parallelisms  of  history. 
But  there  are  also  cases  that  are  more  than  parallel,  and 
circumstances  that  are  more  than  similar.  It  was  identi- 
cally the  same,  not  a  similar  Christianity,  which  was  de- 
nounced by  the  Sanhedrim,  and  which  suffered  in  the  ten 
persecutions.  It  was  identically  the  same  Protestantism 
for  which  John  IIuss  endured  martyrdom  on  the  continent, 
and  George  Wishart  in  our  own  country.  It  was  identi- 
cally the  same  Presbyterianism  for  which  Melville  died  in 
exile,  and  Guthrie  on  the  scaffold.  Is  there  no  such  well- 
marked  identity  of  principle  between  the  Churchmen  on 
whom  the  fires  of  Middleton  and  Lauderdale  fell  heaviest, 
and  the  Churchmen  exposed  in  the  present  conflict  to  the 
still  more  merciless  exactions  of  the  Court  of  Session  ? 
And  would  not  such  of  our  bitter  opponents  as  profess  a 
high  respect  for  the  fathers  of  our  Church  do  well  to 
remember,  that  what  has  already  occurred  may  possibly 
occur  again,  and  that  there  once  flourished  a  very  respect- 
able party,  who,  when  busied  in  persecuting  the  prophets 
of  their  own  times,  were  engaged  also  in  building  tombs 
to  the  memory  of  the  prophets  slain  by  their  fathers  ? 


THE   TWIN  PRESBYTERIES   OF   STRATHBOGIE. 

Some  of  our  readers  will  be  perhaps  surprised  to  learn 
that  there  are  now  two  presbyteries  in  Strathbogie, — the 
one  recognized  by  the  Church  of  Scotland  as  one  of  her 
duly  constituted  inferior  courts;  the   other  consisting  of 


THE   TWIN    PRESBYTERIES    OF    STRATHBOGIE.  205 

seven  suspended  ministers,  recognized  by  no  Church  what- 
ever. It  was  at  one  time  supposed  that  secessions  from 
the  Scottish  Church  and  tlie  reign  of  Moderation  would 
have  come  to  an  end  together.  But  there  is  no  mind 
sagacious  enough  to  calcuhite  on  all  the  possibilities.  The 
schism,  too,  seems  to  be  spreading,  and  the  members  of 
this  newly-erected  presbytery  are  actively  engaged  in 
adding  to  their  number  one  Mr.  Edwards,  an  accomplished 
gentleman,  who  understands  syntax,  preaches  a  church 
empty,  rivals  ITorsley  in  Biblical  criticism,  and  is  not  less 
a  Christian  than  any  of  the  seven  ministers  themselves. 
Addison  tells  of  a  worthy  author  who  wrote  a  large  book 
to  prove  that  generals  without  armies  cannot  achieve  great 
victories.  It  is  to  be  hoped  that,  for  the  good  of  learning, 
the  argument  still  survives,  and  that  it  may  possibly  apply 
to  clergymen,  quoad  civilia^  when  suspended  by  the  Church 
and  deserted  by  tlie  people. 

The  presbytery  met  at  Keith  on  Wednesday  last.  All 
the  members  attended,  —  the  seven  suspended  ministers 
and  all,  —  and  the  meeting  was  constituted  by  prayer.  The 
seven  insisted  that  their  names  should  be  entered  in  the 
sedeiunt  by  the  clerk,  as  members  of  court.  Their  proposal 
was,  of  course,  negatived,  on  the  obvious  plea,  that  so  long 
as  the  act  of  susi)ension  remains  in  force,  they  can  have  no 
status  in  the  presbytery,  or  any  Church  court  whatever. 
Mr.  Mearns,  the  clerk,  however,  a  son  of  Dr.  Mearns  of 
Aberdeen,  and  a  person  of  similar  views  with  themselves, 
engrossed  their  names  in  defiance  of  the  legitimately  con- 
stituted members.  He  was,  in  consequence,  suspended, 
and  the  Rev.  Mr.  Bell,  one  of  the  preachers  appointed  by 
the  Commission,  chosen  in  his  place.  But  the  suspended 
clerk,  like  the  suspended  clergymen,  held  himself  none  the 
less  in  office  for  the  suspension,  and  refused  to  deliver  up 
the  records.  A  scene  of  confusion  ensued.  Mr.  Bell,  the 
newly-chosen  clerk  of  the  presbytery,  commenced  reading 
a  minute  of  their  proceedings ;  Mr.  Mearns,  at  the  sugges- 
tion  of  Mr.  Allardyce,  began  reading  at  the  same  time, 

18 


206    THE  TWIX  PRESBYTERIES  OF  STRATHBOGIE. 

and  at  the  pitch  of  his  voice,  the  minute  of  the  previous 
meeting,  rescinded  by  sentence  of  the  Commission.  The 
legitimate  members  carried,  that  whatever  might  be  at- 
tempted by  the  pretended  clerk  should  be  lield  null  and 
void.  It  was  urged  on  the  other  side  by  Mr.  Allardyce, 
one  of  the  disqualified  seven,  that,  in  terms  of  the  rescinded 
minute,  the  presbytery  should  proceed  to  take  Mr.  Ed- 
wards, the  rejected  of  Marnoch,  on  his  trials.  The  mod- 
erator, Mr.  Dewar,  of  course  refused  either  to  recognize 
the  mover  as  a  member  of  court,  or  the  minute  as  a  docu- 
ment on  which  to  found.  It  was  modestly  proposed  by 
Mr.  Allardyce,  in  turn,  that  Mr.  Dewar  should  be  forthwith 
removed  for  contumacy  from  the  moderator's  chair;  and, 
five  of  the  remaining  six  acquiescing  in  the  proposal,  it 
was  pronounced  that  the  moderator  was  removed,  and  that 
Mr.  Cruickshank,  of  Glass,  was  appointed  moderator  in  his 
place.  Mr.  Allardyce  next  suggested  that,  to  avoid  further 
interruption,  the  ^:)re5%^ery  should  retire  into  anotlier 
room,  and  proceed  to  business.  And  accordingly  the 
seven  suspended  ministers,  with  their  disqiicdified  clerk, 
left  the  place  of  meeting  for  an  adjoining  apartment,  to 
take  the  rejected  i)resentee  on  his  trials,  in  terms  of  the 
rescinded  minute.  Tlie  bona  fide  presbytery  remained  to 
tnmsact  the  real  business  which  had  brought  them  to- 
gether. They  were  Avaited  upon  in  the  course  of  the 
meeting  by  a  deputation  from  Huntly,  with  a  largely  signed 
petition  from  the  inhabitants,  respecting  the  building  and 
constitution  of  a  new  church.  The  petition  was  read  in 
the  usual  form,  and  ordered  to  be  laid  on  the  table  until 
next  meeting. 

Suspended^  disqucdified^  rejected.,  rescinded.,  —  all  these 
are  English  words,  and  bear  very  definite  meanings.  The 
Presbytery  of  the  Seven —  a  phrase,  by  the  by,  that  sounds 
very  like  the  Council  of  t J le  Ten — |)roceeded  to  business 
like  their  brethren  ;  and  they  began,  not  by  framing  a 
confession  of  faith,  or  by  drawing  up  a  testimony,  but 
by   taking   Mr.  Edwards  on  his   trials.      They   were   not 


THE    TWIN    PRESBYTERIES    OF    STRxVTHLOGIE.  207 

compelled  to  do  it,  one  of  them  remarked  ;  they  were 
not  forced  into  it  by  hornings  and  captions;  and  it  had 
been  said  in  high  quarters  that  they  miglit  not  be  quite  so 
precipitate.  But  the  doctrine  was  a  scandalous  doctrine; 
they  would  listen  to  no  delay.  It  was  their  duty  to  take 
Mr.  Edwards  on  his  trials,  and  they  were  resolved  to  do 
their  duty.  Mr.  Edwards  accordingly  proceeded  to  deliver 
the  exercises  prescribed  to  him.  One  of  these  was  a  dis- 
course on  the  text  in  Peter,  "  By  which  also  he  went  and 
preached  unto  the  spirits  in  prison."  His  views  on  the 
passage  are  not  stated,  and  we  have  no  means  of  knowing 
whether  he  remarked  that  there  are  discourses  not  unfre- 
quently  preached  by  the  sjnrits  in  prison  themselves. 
The  other  exercise  was  a  piece  of  Latinity,  termed  an 
exegesis. 

The  meeting,  at  an  early  stage,  was  interrupted  by  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Robertson,  of  Gartly.  He  had  been  sent,  he 
stated,  as  a  deputation  from  the  presbytery,  in  consequence 
of  a  report  which  had  reached  them  that  seven  individuals, 
calling  themselves  the  Presbytery  of  Strathbogie^  were  pro- 
ceeding with  the  trials  of  Mr.  Edwards,  and  he  now  wished 
to  know  whether  the  report  was  true.  "  TFe  are  the  ]  res- 
bytery,"  said  one,  "and  sent  no  such  deputation."  — '  Xo 
reply  should  be  given,"  exclaimed  half  a  dozen  others. 
"  If  we  be  interrupted  in  this  way,"  remarked  a  member, 
bolder  than  the  rest,  "  I  shall  move  that  the  person  inter- 
rupting us  be  taken  into  custody."  Mr.  Robertson  left  the 
room,  and  the  seven  proceeded  to  pnss  judgment  on  the 
exercises  of  Mr.  Edwards.  It  is  wonderful  how  genius 
may  lie  hid  ;  but  it  breaks  forth  at  last.  Mr.  Cruickshank, 
of  Glass,  has  discovered  that  this  hitherto  neglected  man 
is  elegant  in  his  Latin  and  profound  in  his  English,  and 
that  he  beats  Bishop  Horsley  all  to  sticks  in  Biblical  criti- 
cism ;  Mr.  Cruickshank,  of  Mortlach,  is  equally  decided ; 
Mr.  Masson  was  astonished  at  the  research  displayed  in 
the  one  discourse,  and  the  first-rate  character  of  the  other; 
Mr.  Thomson  was  struck  with  the  rich  scriptural  illustra- 


208  THE   TWIN    PRESBYTERIES    OF    STRATHBOGIE. 

tion  ;  Mr.  Cowie  saw  the  difficulty  and  the  triumph,  —  the 
defeat  of  Horsley,  and  the  manly  integrity  of  the  Latin; 
Mr.  Walker  saw  it  too  ;  and  Mr.  Allardyce,  though  he  had 
not  caught  the  whole  of  the  more  classical  discourse,  — 
not,  of  course,  from  any  deafness,  like  that  of  the  monk, 
in  his  Latin  ear,  —  was  quite  of  the  general  opinion.  "It 
is  sweet,"  says  the  old  poet,  "  to  be  praised  by  those  whom 
all  men  agree  in  praising."  The  seven  suspended  minis- 
ters are  rich  in  classical  literature,  and  deeply  read  in 
Horsley.  The  Bishop,  however,  has  written  one  sentence, 
not  heretical,  which  perhaps  Mr.  Edwards  has  not  yet  sur- 
passed :  it  refers  to  religion,  and  we  press  it  on  their  notice. 
"There  is  an  incurable  ignorance,"  says  the  divine,  "which 
is  ignorant  even  of  its  own  want  of  knowledge."  There 
is  a  sentence,  too,  in  the  classics  which  we  think  they  would 
also  do  well  to  remember.  "  When  the  gods  devote  men 
to  destruction,  they  first  take  away  their  senses." 

And  it  is  thus  that  these  weak  and  misguided  men  are 
setting  themselves  up  in  senseless  but  bitter  and  dangerous 
hostility  to  the  best  interests  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 
and  acquiring  for  themselves  a  prominent,  but  surely  no 
envi  ible,  place  in  her  history.  It  would  be  a  vain  matter 
to  argue  the  point  with  them;  it  is  not  argument  they 
need.  It  would  be  equally  idle,  but  for  an  opposite  cause, 
to  reason  the  matter  with  the  Christian  people  of  Scotland. 
But  the  case  is  a  striking  one :  it  shows  how  much,  and  in 
what  degree,  the  spiritual  character  may  be  derived  from 
a  secular  court ;  and  how  much  and  in  what  degree  secular 
acquirements  qualify  for  a  spiritual  office.  It  is  not  enough 
that  a  few  obscure  country  clergymen  find  no  flaw  in  a 
man's  literature ;  it  is  not  enough  that  they  do  not  discover, 
or  perhaps  seek  to  discover,  any  very  gross  blemish  in  his 
reputation.  There  is  an  all-important  change,  regarding 
which  our  Saviour  hath  declared,  with  the  solemnity  of  an 
oath,  that  the  man  on  whom  it  hath  not  passed  "shall  in 
no  way  enter  the  kingdom  of  heaven  ; "  and  without  this 
great  qualification    no  other  can  be  of  any  avail.     Much 


THE   TWO    STUDENTS.  209 

has  been  written  on  the  force  of  sympathy,  —  much,  doubt- 
less, that  is  fanciful  and  idle.  But  there  is  a  sympathy  to 
which  our  Lord  refers  that  is  not  fanciful,  —  the  sympathy 
through  which  "the  sheep  know  the  voice  of  the  good 
shepherd,  and  follow  him."  This  sympathy  the  people  of 
Marnoch  have  felt  and  can  appreciate ;  but  they  have  not 
felt  it  with  regard  to  the  rejected  presentee. 


THE    TWO     STUDENTS. 

There  is  a  learned  lawyer  of  the  present  day  remarkable 
for  his  long  speeches,  —  for  an  ability  of  writing  with  much 
ease  what  cannot  be  read  without  great  difficulty,  —  and 
for  the  secularity  of  his  views  in  ecclesiastical  naatters. 
This  learned  gentleman  has  written  a  book  on  the  Church 
question,  in  which  he  discusses,  among  other  points,  the 
essential  qualifications  of  a  young  licentiate.  And  so  com- 
plete has  he  rendered  the  list,  as  to  omit  only  a  single 
point  of  fitness,  —  that  one,  however,  the  essential  i')oint 
emphatically  described  by  our  Saviour  as  "the  one  thing 
needful."  He  describes  the  difficulty  with  which  the  theo- 
logical student  has  often  to  contend,  the  long  term  of  pri- 
vation, the  immense  labor,  the  many  years  of  study,  the 
great  sacrifices  in  early  life.  He  states  that  a  parochial 
charge  is  the  sole  object  for  which  all  that  he  accomplishes 
is  accomplished,  or  that  he  endures  is  endured.  He  states, 
too,  that  the  remuneration  is  not  proportionally  great,  — 
that  the  scanty  income  attached  to  parochial  charges  leaves, 
iifter  all,  only  a  life  of  struggle,  care,  and  anxiety  to  the 
incumbent.  He  shows,  besides,  how  inexpressibly  hard  it 
would  be  — how  very  unfeeling  and  very  cruel  —  to  suffer 
the  effects  of  popular  prejudice  to  disappoint  the  poor 
scholar  of  his  scanty  and  inadequate  meed,  after  his  long 
years  of  endurance  and  exertion. 

About  fourteen  years  ago  we  formed  a  very  slight 
18* 


210  THE   TWO    STUDENTS. 

acquaintance  with  a  student  of  divinity,  who  came  from 
a  remote  part  of  the  country  to  teach  a  school  in  a  village 
on  the  eastern  coast  of  Scotland.  He  was  a  young  man 
of  very  respectable  ability,  and  very  considerable  acquire- 
ment. He  was  a  person,  too,  of  more  than  common 
determination,  and  in  setting  himself  to  school,  and  in 
passing  through  college,  he  had  to  contend  with  all  the 
difficulties  incident  to  a  humble  station  and  very  limited 
means.  He  was  naturally  of  a  metaphysical  turn,  and  had 
carried  away,  when  attending  the  moral  philosophy  class 
at  college,  the  second  prize  of  the  year.  Little  more  can 
be  added,  however,  on  the  favorable  side.  There  was  a 
substratum  of  strong  animal  propensity  in  the  character ; 
some  of  the  higher  sentiments  were  miserably  deficient ; 
his  metaphysical  cast  of  mind  had  merely  enabled  him  to 
master  the  subtleties  of  Hume,  without  enabling  him  to 
discover  their  unsolidity ;  and  he  had  no  practical  acquaint- 
ance with  religion.  He  had  determined  on  being  a  clergy- 
man from  motives  of  exactly  the  same  kind  which  lead 
students  in  the  other  walks  to  make  choice  of  physic  or  of 
law.  Things  are  always  judged  of  by  comparison,  and  the 
meed  which  may  seem  scanty  and  inadequate  to  a  wealthy 
lawyer  in  extensive  practice  is  deemed  an  object  worth 
struggling  for  by  men  who,  as  mechanics  or  laborers,  would 
have  had  to  work  hard  for  not  much  more  than  one-tenth 
the  same  amount  of  remuneration. 

The  student  of  divinity  tared  but  hardly  in  the  village. 
His  school  was  tolerably  Avell  attended ;  it  was  seen  that 
he  was  a  good  linguist  and  a  respectable  mathematician, 
and  that  his  pupils  improved  under  him.  By  and  by,  how- 
ever, it  was  seen  also  that  he  was  not  at  all  the  sort  of  per- 
son a  student  of  theology  ought  to  be.  He  was  naturally 
cautious,  and  it  was  difficult  to  bring  any  direct  charge 
home  against  him;  and  yet  there  was  a  general  convic- 
tion in  the  village  that  he  w^as  not  ^particularly  sober,  and 
not  very  strictly  honest;  and  a  report  had  gone  abroad 
which,  though  it  referred  to  something  of  a  scandalous 


THE   TWO    STUDENTS.  211 

nature  regarding  him,  was  yet  deemed  not  at  all  scandalous 
in  itself.  It  was  bad,  but  then  it  was  true.  There  were 
religious  men  in  the  village,  —  he  had  formed  no  close 
intimacies  with  them  ;  there  were  persons  of  an  equivocal 
character  in  it,  —  they  ranked  among  his  most  intimate 
acquaintance.  He  contracted  debts  which  lie  seemed 
unwilling  to  pay.  On  one  occasion  he  was  summoned 
into  court  for  the  rent  of  a  hall  in  which  he  taught  liis 
school ;  and  he  rendered  to  the  magistrate,  in  his  defence, 
eighteen  ingenious,  semi-metaphysical  reasons  against  pay- 
ing any  rent  at  all.  But  the  one  simple  argument  of  the 
pursuer  —  and  it  amounted  to  little  more  than  the  "Pay 
what  thou  owest"  of  the  parable  —  proved  an  overmatch 
for  the  eighteen.  In  short,  all  who  knew  him  had  come  to 
think  highly  of  his  ingenuity,  and  marvellously  little  of 
his  principles,  when  his  struggles  in  attending  the  classes 
both  at  college  and  the  divinity  hall  came  to  a  close,  and 
he  was  taken  on  his  trials  by  the  presbytery  of  the  district, 
to  receive  the  finishing  qualification  through  which  im- 
moral men  are  transformed,  by  virtue  of  a  license,  into 
teachers  of  morality,  and  men  of  no  religion  into  dissem- 
inators of  religious  truth. 

The  clergyman  of  the  parish  in  which  the  village  is 
situated  is  a  conscientious  and  devout  man.  A  majority 
of  his  brethren  in  the  presbytery  are  of  the  same  charac- 
ter; and  they  determined,  if  possible,  to  keep  the  school- 
master out  of  the  Church.  They  tried  him  on  Latin  and 
Greek,  on  theology  and  the  mathematics;  but  the  school- 
master was  quite  as  accomplished  a  scholar  as  most  of 
themselves.  They  tried  to  substantiate  against  him  charges 
of  whose  justice  they  were  all  morally  convinced ;  but  the 
schoolmaster  had  been  cautious,  and  they  found  them,  one 
by  one,  vanish  in  their  grasp.  Difiiculties  were  thrown  in 
the  way,  and  objections  raised,  but  the  perseverance  of  the 
probationer  wore  them  down  one  after  another ;  and  the 
presbytery  were  at  length  compelled  to  declare  him  a 
licentiate    of   the    Church    of  Scotland.      Still,  however, 


212  THE  TWO   STUDENTS. 

there  was  no  change  produced  by  the  license,  except  that 
the  schoobnaster  now  and  then  read  a  clever  discourse  in 
the  pulpit  of  a  Moderate  minister.  He  lived  as  before ; 
never  paid  liis  debts  when  he  could  avoid  paying  them; 
got  drunk  occasionally  with  men  who,  as  there  is  honor 
even  among  thieves,  never  betrayed  him ;  and  set  his  trust 
for  the  future  in  the  law  of  patronage  and  the  kindness  of 
a  Highland  cousin.  The  fatal  veto  act  of  1833  passed  the 
General  Assembly,  and  the  poor  licentiate  was  ruined. 
Ministers,  such  as  the  suspended  seven,  might  have  recom- 
mended him;  the  patrons  of  Mr.  Clark  or  of  Mr.  Edwards 
might  have  presented  him;  there  was  no  presbytery  in 
the  Church  which,  under  the  old  system,  could  have  pos- 
sibly avoided  ordaining  him ;  but  the  people  disliked  and 
suspected  him,  and  the  people  would  not  have  him.  In 
short,  the  poor  licentiate  was  a  broken  man.  It  is  scarcely 
necessary  to  add,  as  it  does  not  bear  essentially  on  the 
end  we  propose,  that,  losing  heart  and  hope,  he  soon  after- 
wards fell  into  0})en  immorality,  and  quitted  the  kingdom. 
At  the  time  when  we  knew  a  little  of  the  unlucky 
student,  we  were  intimately  acquainted  with  a  student  of 
a  very  opposite  chai-acter.  He  had  received  an  ordinary 
Scotch  education,  and  had  commenced  business  as  a  shop- 
keeper in  the  same  village  in  which  the  other  taught  his 
school.  He  was  a  shrewd,  vigorous-minded  young  man, 
invincibly  honest,  and,  withal,  diligent  and  careful ;  and  he 
began  to  save  money.  His  mind,  however,  became  the 
subject  of  a  very  remarkable  change.  He  began  to  feel 
that  what  he  had  been  accustomed  to  regard  as  the  truly 
important  business  of  life  is  really  but  of  minor  impor- 
tance after  all,  and  that  there  is  a  "better  part"  to  be  first 
sought  after,  of  incomparably  greater  interest  and  magni- 
tude. Those  doctrines  of  the  New  Testament  virtually 
rejected  by  a  considerable  party  in  the  Church  as  mysteri- 
ous and  peculiar  continually  filled  his  mind,  —  the  fall  and 
the  restoration  of  man,  the  efficacy  of  prayer,  the  felt 
influences   of  the  Spirit,  the    inexhaustible  merits  of  the 


THE   TWO    STUDENTS.  213 

atonement.  His  heart  was  powerfully  impressed,  and  he 
became  anxiously  desirous  that  the  hearts  of  others  might 
be  impressed  also.  He  thought  he  could  tell  forcibly  what 
he  had  felt  so  warmly;  and,  after  long  and  serious  thought, 
and  long  and  earnest  prayer,  —  after  he  had  taken  the 
advice  of  all  his  better  friends,  and  had  carefully  examined 
whether  the  guiding  motive  was  really  pure,  and  whether 
he  was  not  confounding  strong  inclination  for  the  necessary 
ability,  —  he  shut  up  his  shop,  and  entered  the  university 
as  a  student. 

Wilberforce  was  a  very  different  sort  of  person  from  the 
Dean  of  Faculty.  The  refined  and  elevated  spirit  of  the 
one  could  appreciate  those  influences  of  the  unseen  world 
which  come  breathing  upon  the  heart,  awakening  all  its 
aspirations  after  the  spiritually  good,  strengthening  its 
desires  for  the  truly  useful,  enabling  it  to  forget  self  and 
every  petty  concern,  and  to  set  before  it,  as  the  prime 
object,  the  glory  of  God  and  the  salvation  of  souls.  The 
other  is  a  cautious  calculator  on  the  amount  of  the  ecclesi- 
astical fee  —  the  Joseph  Hume  of  the  Church's  tempo- 
ralities. No  man  can  better  balance  the  half-charms  of  the 
stipend,  and  the  half-comforts  of  the  manse,  against  the 
years  laboriously  spent,  and  the  privations  patiently  en- 
dured, in  striving  to  secure  them.  The  one  deplores  a 
licentiate  ruined  in  his  prospects  through  the  rejection  of 
the  people,  and  sent  to  spend  a  life  of  obscurity  in  bitter- 
ness and  misery.  "I  do  not,"  says  the  other,  in  writing  of 
Dr.  Carey,  "I  do  not  know  a  finer  instance  of  the  moral 
sublime  than  that  a  j^oor  cobbler  working  in  his  stall 
should  conceive  the  idea  of  converting  the  Hindus  to 
Christianity." 

But  we  must  not  lose  sight  of  our  friend  the  student. 
"We  wish  some  one  would  tell  us  how  it  is  that  the  Mod- 
erates arrogate  to  themselves  so  much  of  the  mind  and 
accomplishment  of  the  Church.  It  may  be  mere  modesty 
asserting  its  right;  but  the  present  controversy  at  least 
does  not  promise  to  show  that  they  are  more  than  second 


214  THE   TWO    STUDENTS. 

best  in  either  intellect  or  learning.  The  conscientions 
student  wrought  hard.  He  gained  no  prizes  the  first  year, 
for  he  had  started  from  a  point  far  in  the  rear  of  all  his 
competitors ;  but  he  was  soon  abreast  of  the  front  rank, 
and  in  the  mathematical  class  of  the  second  year  he  was 
declared,  after  a  hard  contest,  the  first  man.  He  gained 
several  other  prizes  besides;  and,  whatever  might  be 
thought  of  his  religion,  no  one  could  well  des{)ise  his 
learning.  The  little  money  he  had  saved  as  a  shopkeeper 
failed  him  ere  he  had  got  half  through  his  course.  But, 
though  as  little  presumptuous  as  any  man,  he  believed  in 
a  superintending  Providence,  and  that  if  he  was  really 
needed  in  the  Church  some  unseen  path  would  open  for 
him  as  he  went.  And  a  path  did  open.  He  received 
unsolicited  employment  as  a  tutor  in  a  respectable  fimily, 
and  soon  after  an  appointment,  equally  unsought,  to  a 
parish  school.  He  at  length  finished  his  pi*ej)aratory 
course.  He  was  naturally  of  a  retiring  disposition.  He 
had  no  influential  friends;  he  Avas  acquainted  with  no 
patron ;  he  did  not  set  himself  to  court  popularity.  There 
seemed  to  be  no  way  of  access  for  him  into  the  Church. 
He  was  confident,  however,  that  he  would  find  something 
to  do  somewhere;  something  in  Sierra  Leone,  or  Tahiti, 
or  New  Holland,  if  not  at  home ;  and  so  he  did  not  feel 
very  anxious.  By  and  by,  however,  the  people  came  to 
take  an  interest  in  him;  they  began  to  find  out  somehow 
that  he  was  very  much  in  earnest,  and  very  much  in  duty; 
that  he  was  on  exceedingly  good  terms  with  a  number  of 
pious,  old,  poor  people,  who  had  only  their  Christianity  to 
recommend  them ;  that  he  was  charitable  to  the  utmost 
of  his  very  limited  means ;  and  that,  when  sickness  or 
distress  visited  a  2:)Oor  family  in  his  neighborhood,  he  was 
sure  to  visit  it  too.  In  short,  the  result  was,  that  not  only 
did  the  people  begin  to  like  him,  but  it  was  the  best  peo- 
ple who  liked  him  best.  A  vacancy  occurred  in  a  remote 
Highland  parish,  under  the  patronage  of  the  Crown ;  off 
went  a   petition    to   Lord  John    Russell ;    down    came    a 


'  THE   PRESENTATION    TO    DAVIOT.  215 

]>resentatioii  from  his  lordship  ;  not  one  of  the  parishioners 
so  miicli  as  dreamed,  of  the  veto ;  and  the  friendless  stu- 
dent is  now  a  useful  and  respected  minister  of  the  Church 
of  Scotland,  and  a  zealous  advocate  of  the  popular  right. 
He  is,  in  sliort,  one  of  what  a  smart  contemporary  calls 
the  wild  clergy. 

We  have  drawn  two  portraits,  so  faithful  in  every  trait, 
so  little  indebted  to  fincy,  that  in  at  least  one  district  of 
country  there  are  hundreds,  nay  tliousands,  who  will  be 
able  at  the  first  glance  to  write  a  name  nnder  each.  They 
represent  the  two  opposite  classes  of  our  theological  stu- 
dents, —  we  grant,  not  fairly ;  —  the  one  is  a  high  specimen, 
the  other  falls  somewhat  below  the  average.  But  in  the 
grand  distinguishing  principle,  in  the  all-essential  difference 
of  motive,  the  representation  is  complete.  The  one  class 
enter  the  Church  earnestly  solicitous  for  the  high  honor  of 
being  made  fellow-workers  with  Christ;  the  other,  that 
they  may  becouie  gentlemen  of  from  two  to  three  hundred 
a  year.  The  one  class  come  frankly  forward  as  the  friends 
and  advocates  of  the  non-intrusion  principle ;  the  other 
discover  that  it  is  a  principle  denounced  by  the  law, 
subversive  of  the  Establishment,  and  most  unflivorably 
regarded  by  "many  of  the  best  and  wisest  ministers  of  the 
Church." 


THE   PRESENTATION   TO   DAVIOT. 

We  paid  our  first  visit  to  Daviot  about  twelve  years  ago, 
—  late  in  the  summer  of  1828.  It  was  on  a  connnunion 
Sabbath,  and  we  went  to  attend  sermon  in  the  parish 
church.  The  parish  is  situated,  as  most  of  our  readers  are 
aware,  in  the  Highlands  of  Inverness-shire,  about  six  or 
seven  miles  to  the  south  of  Inverness.  There  rises  a  lofty 
rectilinear  ridge  directly  over  the  town,  composed  of  the 
old  red  sandstone  of  the  district  upheaved  against  tlie 
loftier  primary  regions ;  a  dark  line  of  mountains  appears 


216  THE    PRESENTATION   TO    DAVIOT.' 

beyond;  and  in  toiling  up  the  long  ascent,  which  passes 
from  fertility  and  cultivation  to  a  widely-spread  sterility, 
the  stranger  supposes  that  he  is  quitting  the  inhabited  part 
of  the  country  altogether  for  the  upper  wilds.  About  live 
miles  from  the  town,  however,  he  gains  the  top  of  the 
ridge,  and  finds  that  a  wide  moory  valley,  traversed  by  a 
river,  and  mottled  here  and  there  Avith  a  few  groups  of 
cottages  and  a  few  patches  of  corn,  intervenes  between 
him  and  the  hills.  This  long,  wide  valley  comprises  the 
greater  part  of  the  parish  of  Daviot,  and  the  chui-ch,  a 
handsome  little  edifice,  occupies  the  northern  bank  of  the 
river.  We  had  no  difl[iculty  in  finding  onr  way.  The  scat- 
tered hamlets  had  poured  forth  their  little  groups  of  grave, 
church-going  Highlanders;  and  the  long,  wearisome  ascent 
seemed  dotted  with  passengers  to  the  top.  We  found  the 
churchyard  filled  to  the  gate  with  the  Gaelic  congregation, 
and  the  wooden  tent  which  served  as  a  pulpit  rising  in  the 
midst.  The  entire  scene  was  characteristic  of  the  border 
districts  of  the  Higrhlands.  There  was  a  larsre  admixture 
of  the  Lowland  garb,  especially  among  the  females ;  but 
the  plaids  and  the  bright  tartans  carried  it  over  the  shop- 
furnished  cloths  and  calicoes  of  the  south ;  and  an  eye 
accustomed  to  the  peculiarities  of  the  Celtic  form  and 
countenance  could  scarce  have  mistaken  the  grave  but 
keen-eyed  descendants  of  the  old  clan  Chattan,  which, 
from  time  immemorial,  had  occupied  this  part  of  the 
country,  for  an  assemblage  of  their  Saxon  neighbors  of 
the  plains.  There  was  an  air  of  deep  seriousness  spread 
over  the  whole.  The  clergyman  who  preached  from  the 
tent,  himself  a  Highlander,  was  a  devout,  good  man,  of  the 
popular  school,  and  the  attention  of  the  Highlanders  was 
riveted  to  the  discourse.  We  may  remark,  in  passing,  that 
the  Highland  preacher  who  addresses  Highlanders  pos- 
sesses a  mighty  advantage,  in  his  language,  over  the  Low- 
land preacher  who  addresses  a  rural  Lowland  population 
in  English.  The  English  language  is  unquestionably  a 
noble  instrument  in  the  hand  of  a  master;  but  few  preach- 


THE    PRESENTATIOX    TO    DAVIOT.  217 

ers,  and  certainly  fewer  congregations,  acquire  nearly  the 
same  mastery  over  it  that  even  ordinary  Highland  preach- 
ers and  congregations  possess  over  the  Gaelic.  Almost 
every  individual,  in  the  one  case,  is  acquainted  with  the 
wdiole  vocabulary,  —  and  a  very  expressive  vocabulary  it  is, 
for  at  least  narrative,  description,  and  sentiment ;  in  the 
other  case,  the  acquaintance  is  limited,  among  the  great 
bulk  of  the  people,  to  a  narrow  round  of  ordinary  terms. 
If  there  be  no  fatal  defect  on  the  part  of  the  preacher,  a 
Highland  congregation  is  invariably  an  attentive  one ;  and 
rarely  have  we  seen  Highlanders  more  seriously  attentive 
anywhere  than  in  the  churchyard  of  Daviot  on  this  com- 
munion Sabbath. 

The  minister  of  the  parish  (the  late  Mr.  M'Phail) 
preached  inside  the  church  to  an  English  congregation 
of  about  two  hundred.  He  was  a  devout  and  excellent 
man  —  a  man  of  very  considerable  wit,  too.  Mr.  M'Phail's 
discourse,  like  that  of  the  Gaelic  preacher  outside,  was  a 
very  impressive  one,  and  the  congregation  were  deeply 
attentive.  We  were  struck,  however,  accustomed  as  we 
were  to  the  state  of  matters  in  the  north,  with  the  small 
proportion  which  the  communicants  of  the  parish  bore  to 
its  general  population.  The  number  of  females  at  the  com- 
munion table  considerably  exceeded  that  of  the  males, 
as  is  commonly  the  case  where  communicants  are  not 
numerous,  but  the  whole  taken  together  were  dispropor- 
tionately few.  And  yet  we  could  not  avoid  the  conclu- 
sion, notwithstanding, — a  conclusion  which  we  have  since 
had  repeated  opportunities  of  verifying,  —  that  the  people 
of  Daviot  are  a  serious  and  moral  people,  patient  of  reli- 
gious instruction,  and  warmly  attached,  like  all  the  rest 
of  their  countrymen,  to  the  doctrines  of  the  Evangelical 
school.  They  can  understand  and  value  the  religion  fitted 
by  Deity  to  the  wants  and  wishes  of  the  human  heart. 

The  parish  is  under  the  jDatronage  of  the  Crown.  When 
the  good  Mr.  M'Phail  was  on  his  death-bed  the  people 
came  to  understand  that  interest  had  been  made  in  high 

19 


218  THE    PRESENTATION    TO    DAVIOT. 

quarters  to  preengage  Lord  John  Russell,  if  possible,  in 
favor  of  a  certain  young  gentleman,  who  would  have 
deemed  two  hundred  a  year  and  a  free  house  a  very  com- 
fortable settlement.  It  was  not  quite  the  time  they  could 
have  chosen  for  themselves  for  urging  anything  of  a  coun- 
teractive tendency  with  his  lordship  ;  but  they  had  no 
choice,  just  as  a  Christian  army,  when  attacked  by  an 
enemy  on  the  Sabbath,  can  have  none ;  and  so  they  united 
to  petition  Lord  John  that  the  appointment  might  be  left 
open.  His  lordship  cordially  acquiesced:  he  went  even 
further,  and  stated  that  any  clergyman  whom  they  agreed 
in  recommending  would  be  given  to  the  parish.  Mr. 
M'Phail  died,  and  rather  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  adult 
male  parishioners  united  in  petitioning  the  Crown  for  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Cook,  one  of  the  clergymen  of  Inverness,  —  a 
gentleman,  be  it  remarked,  already  settled  as  a  minister  in 
a  town  which,  from  its  size  and  population,  is  known  all 
over  the  country  as  the  capital  of  the  Highlands.  The 
parish  of  Daviot  is  very  extensive,  —  we  believe,  from 
eighteen  to  twenty  miles  in  length  ;  and  yet,  in  little  more 
than  twenty-four  hours  all  the  signatures  were  adhibited 
to  the  petition  —  surely,  jjroof  enough  of  itself  that  any 
charge  of  canvassing  the  parishioners,  which  might  be 
preferred  against  Mr.  Cook  or  his  friends,  could  not  pos- 
sibly be  just.  The  people  of  a  district  twenty  miles  in 
extent,  when  exceedingly  anxious  to  sign  a  petition,  may 
contrive  to  do  so  in  a  very  short  time ;  but  to  canvass 
such  a  ])arish,  in  order  to  render  people  willing  who  w^ere 
not  willing  before,  cannot  be  done  quite  so  much  in  a 
hurry.  It  was  one  of  the  objections  to  Bayes,  in  the 
"Rehearsal,"  that,  for  the  sake  of  probability,  he  should 
not  have  brought  about  his  great  changes  so  very  suddenly. 
Now,  on  the  allegation  that  the  parishioners  had  been 
canvassed,  —  an  allegation  unsupported,  of  course,  by  any 
inquiry,  for  inquiry  might  have  led  to  very  inconvenient 
results,  —  the  prayer  of  the  petition  was  refused.  We 
attach   no  blame  to  Lord   John   Russell.     He  has  been 


THE  PRESENTATION  TO  DAVIOT.  219 

somewhat  imprudent  in  believing  too  rashly,  and  that  is 
just  all. 

A  presentation  to  the  parish  was  issued,  through  his 
lordship,  in  behalf  of  a  young  man  favored  by  his  friends, 
but  whom  rather  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  people  have 
resolved  not  to  receive  or  acknowledge  as  their  minister. 
They  could  only  reject  him,  however,  through  their  repre- 
sentatives the  communicants,  seven  of  wdiom  also  declared, 
against  him  —  as  nearly  as  may  be  the  same  proportion  of 
this  class  as  of  the  other.  The  poor  people  were  very 
much  in  earnest.  The  day  approached  on  which  the  seven 
w^ere  to  exercise  their  privilege  of  the  veto  before  the 
presbytery.  Their  fellow-parishioners  were  anxiously 
solicitous  that  they  might  be  able  to  give  an  independent 
and  resolutive  "No"  on  the  occasion,  both  in  their  own 
behalf  and  in  theirs,  without  the  fear  of  laird  or  factor 
before  them,  and  urged  them,  therefore,  to  say  whether 
any  of  them  w^ere  in  arrears  with  their  rent,  that  they 
might  instantly,  by  joint  contribution,  discharge  them 
from  the  obligation.  The  evening  preceding  the  meeting 
of  ijresbytery  arrived,  and  on  that  evening  the  seven  com- 
municants v.'ere  interdicted  by  the  Court  of  Session  'lom 
exercising  their  right.  It  is  unnecessary  to  commeij'.  on 
either  the  cruelty  or  the  unprecedented  nature  of  such  a 
proceeding.  We  may  instance,  however,  one  of  the  dis- 
honorable sophisms  which  our  opponents  employ  in  this 
case,  as  a  pretty  fair  specimen  of  the  whole.  Instead  of 
opposing  in  their  statements  the  majority  of  the  seven 
communicants  to  the  minority  of  the  three,  and  the  ma- 
jority of  rather  more  than  two-thirds  of  the  parisli  to  tlie 
minority  of  rather  less  than  one-third  of  it,  they  oppose 
the  majoi'ity  of  the  one-third  to  the  minority  of  the  seven. 
The  argument,  it  must  be  confessed,  is  worthy  of  the 
cause.  We  may  state,  too,  a  fact  which  illustrates  the 
tone  of  feeling  on  the  opposite  side.  The  people  of  the 
parish  of  Daviot  are  far  from  wealthy.  Highlanders  on 
small    sterile    firms    j-arely   save    money;    an  1    there    has 


220       THE    COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY. 

been  very  little  laid  by  by  the  people  of  this  moorland 
district.  In  the  true  Presbyterian  spirit,  however,  they 
have  declared  their  willingness  to  lay  down  their  liardly- 
earned  pounds  by  tens  and  twelves  apiece,  rather  than 
submit  to  the  intrusion  of  a  minister  who,  in  their  con- 
science, they  believe  unsuited  to  edify  them.  Such  is  the 
spirit  which  our  Dr.  Bryces  and  our  Jolin  Hopes  would 
trample  into  the  very  dust ;  but  by  Him  who  commended 
the  poor  widow  and  her  humble  offering  it  may  be  very 
differently  regarded. 


THE  COMMUNICANTS  OF  THE  NORTH  COUNTRY. 

In  the  preceding  articles  the  Disruption  controversy  is  Illustrated 
in  its  immediate  bearing  on  the  rights  of  the  Christian  people 
invaded  by  patronage.  In  that  "vvhich  follows  —  the  second  point 
at  issue  —  the  possession  of  an  independent  spiritual  jurisdiction  by 
the  Christian  Church  comes  into  view.  The  majority  of  the  Strath- 
bogij  presbytery  had  been  suspended  by  their  ecclesiastical  supe- 
riors ;  the  minority  had  been  empowered  to  exercise  all  presbyterial 
functions;  and  ministers  had  been  appointed  to  conduct  public 
•worship  in  the  parishes  of  the  former.  The  majority  applied  to  the 
Court  of  Session  for  an  interdict  to  arrest  all  action  of  the  eccle- 
siastical authority  in  the  matter,  and  the  decision  of  the  Court  was 
favorable  to  their  claim.  —  Ed. 

In  the  belief  that  the  Church  in  her  jDresent  struggle  can 
have  no  better  friend  than  the  simple  truth,  we  presented 
the  reader  in  a  recent  number  with  an  outline  of  the 
Daviot  case,  and  a  slight,  but,  we  trust,  faithful,  sketch  of 
the  character  of  the  parishioners.  The  poor  Highlanders 
of  Daviot  are  not  unwortliy  the  protection  of  the  Scotti;>h 
Church,  though    the  number   among   them   in    full    com- 


THE   COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY.       221 

m union  with  her  are  so  disproportionately  few.  But  wliy 
are  these  not  more  numerous,  since  the  general  morals 
of  the  people  seem  so  good?  We  crave  the  tolerance 
of  the  reader  should  we  take  what  may  seem  a  circuitous 
route  m  answering  this  question. 

Civilization  did  not  travel  through  Scotland  with  rail- 
way speed  three  centuries  ago.  There  are  still  very  con- 
siderable differences  between  different  districts  of  the 
country.  The  same  fastnesses  which  kept  out  the  Romans 
and  the  English  of  old,  still  keep  out  improvement  and 
the  arts;  and  the  Scotchman  desirous  to  acquaint  himself 
with  the  manners  and  usages  which  prevailed  in  the  days 
of  his  great-grandfather,  and  curious  to  pass,  as  it  were, 
from  the  present  century  to  the  middle  of  the  century 
before  the  last,  has  but  to  transport  himself  to  the  western 
Highlands  of  Ross-shire,  or  to  some  of  the  remoter  islands 
which  lie  beyond.  About  the  period  of  the  Union  even 
the  Lowland  districts  of  the  north  of  Scotland  were  fully  a 
hundred  years  behind  the  Lowland  districts  of  the  south  ; 
they  were  inhabited  by  a  wilder  and  more  turbulent  race, 
und  were,  with  the  exception  of  a  few  insulated  localities, 
Presbyterian  only  in  name.  The  framework  of  the  Scot- 
tish Church  had  been  erected  in  them,  but  the  spirit  was 
wanting. 

Much,  however,  about  the  time  rendered  remarkable  by 
the  revival  at  Cambuslang  and  Kilsyth,  a  widely-extended 
district  in  the  northern  portion  of  the  kingdom  became  the 
scene  of  a  similar  change.  The  popular  mind  suddenly 
awoke  to  the  importance  of  religion ;  the  inhabitants  of 
almost  entire  villages  were  converted ;  prayer-meetings 
were  established;  clergymen  became  deeply  fervent  and 
instant  in  duty;  and  the  morals  of  a  considerable  portion 
of  the  i>eople  rose  at  once,  from  the  comparatively  abject 
state  which  obtains  in  half-civilized  communities,  to  the 
high  Christian  level.  It  is  a  fact  well  known  to  persons 
acquainted  with  the  liistory  of  parties  in  the  Church  for 
the  last  eighty  years,  that  no  inconsiderable  portion  of  the 

19* 


990 


THE    COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY. 


Evangelical  minority  in  our  assemblies  was  drawn  from 
this  northern  district;  and  that,  at  a  period  when  Moder- 
ation was  either  extending  its  paralyzing  influences  over 
the  people  of  the  south,  or  wholly  estranging  them  from 
the  churches  in  which  their  fathers  had  worshipped,  minis- 
ters of  a  very  different  theology,  and  of  a  very  opposite 
character,  were  scattering  the  good  seed  liberally  in  this 
liighly-favored  northern  province,  and  that  the  blessing  of 
God  largely  accompanied  their  labors. 

The  effects  of  the  change  were  all  the  more  marked 
from  the  state  of  manners  and  morals  prevalent  at  the 
time  it  took  j^lace.  There  is  a  mighty  difference  between 
civilization  and  barbarism  ;  and  Christianity  contrasts  much 
more  strongly  with  the  one  than  with  the  other.  There 
was  indisputably  an  all-essential  difference  between  an 
Ebenezer  Erskine  or  a  Thomas  Bateman  before  and  after 
their  conversion,  but  by  no  means  so  cognizable  a  difference 
as  between  the  New  Zealand  warriors  described  by  the 
missionary  Williams  before  and  after  the  same  important 
change  had  passed  upon  them.  The  Scottish  divine  and 
the  English  physician  were  both  respectable  members  of 
society  when  practically  unacquainted  with  the  truth. 
But  not  even  the  miracle  wrought  by  our  Saviour  on  the 
wild  man  who  lived  solitary  among  the  tombs  was  more 
marked  in  its  effects  than  the  conversion  of  the  two  New 
Zealand  chiefs,  as  recorded  by  the  missionary.  Previous 
to  the  change  which  transformed  them  into  gentle  and 
singularly  compassionate-hearted  men,  the  fierce  and  re- 
morseless murderers  and  cannibals  had  never  spared  sex 
nor  age,  —  had  never  fought  with  an  enemy  whom  they 
had  not  subdued, — nor  had  they  ever  subdued  a  poor 
wretch  whom  they  had  not  destroyed.  Now,  the  change 
in  our  northern  districts  was  one  of  striking  contrast,  on 
the  same  principle.  It  took  place  among  a  rude  people. 
There  were  cases  tried  at  the  time  by  the  hereditary  barons 
on  the  court  hills ;  the  town  of  Tain  executed  a  Strath- 
charan  freebooter  on  the  borough  gallows,  several  years 


THE    COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY.       223 

after;  and  cattle-lifting  was  common  in  all  the  districts,  in 
at  least  the  more  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  High- 
lands. On  one  occasion  the  j^arish  of  Nigg — a  parish  in 
the  eastern  district  of  Ross,  and  one  of  the  centres  of  the 
revival  —  was  swept,  in  a  single  night,  of  all  its  cattle  by 
a  band  of  caterans  from  the  w^est.  Tlie  clergyman,  Mr. 
Balfour,  a  brave  as  well  as  a  good  and  eminently  useful 
man,  immediately  set  himself  at  the  head  of  his  parishion- 
ers, pursued  after  the  freebooters,  overtook  them  in  a  wild 
Highland  glen,  fought  them,  beat  them,  and  brought  back 
the  cattle. 

We  have  remarked  that  this  northern  district  was  a  full 
century  behind  the  Lowland  districts  of  the  south  in  gen- 
eral civilization.  It  is  a  rather  striking  fact,  too,  that  the 
religion  of  the  revival  of  this  period  resembled,  in  some 
of  its  accidental  accompaniments,  the  religion  of  the  south 
in  the  previous  century.  Christianity  is  ever  the  same, 
but  it  acts  at  different  times  on  very  different  materials ; 
and,  though  the  greater  effects  are  invariably  identical,  its 
minor  traits  occasionally  differ  with  the  character  of  the 
people  on  whom  it  operates.  There  are  anecdotes  related 
of  the  Pedens,  Camerons,  and  Cargills,  of  the  days  of 
Charles  II.,  that  one  hesitates  either  to  receive  or  to  reject, 
in  at  least  their  full  extent;  there  are  anecdotes  of  an 
almost  identical  character  told  of  the  later  worthies  of  the 
northern  districts.  Stories  are  still  preserved  of  a  Donald 
Roy,  of  Nigg,  —  one  of  the  first  elders  of  the  parish  after 
the  reestablishment  of  Presbytery  at  the  Revolution, — 
which,  if  inserted  in  the  tracts  of  Peter  Walker,  or  the 
older  editions  of  the  "  Scots  Worthies,"  would  be  found 
to  amalgamate  so  entirely  with  the  more  characteristic 
anecdotes  of  these  works,  that  the  nicest  judgment  could 
not  distinguish  betwixt  them.  And  Donald  was  only  one 
of  a  class. 

There  were  prayer-meetings,  as  we  have  said,  established 
very  generally  over  the  district  at  this  period.  There  were 
also  meetings  of  a  somewhat  different  character,  and  which 


224       THE    COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY. 

resembled  much  more  the  meetings  of  an  earlier  age  in 
the  history  of  the  Scottish  Church  than  the  contemporary- 
meetings  of  the  same  period  in  the  south.  In  the  twelfth 
chapter  of  the  First  Book  of  Discipline  we  find  it  laid 
down,  that  in  every  town  where  there  were  "  schools  and 
repaire  of  learned  men,  a  certain  day  in  every  week  should 
be  api)ointed  for  the  exercise  of  what  St.  Paul  calls  proph- 
esying." The  chapter  recommends  that  meetings  be  held 
for  the  edification  of  the  Church,  "by  the  interpreta- 
tion of  Scripture,"  and  that  at  these  meetings  not  only 
should  lay  elders  be  invited  to  communicate  their  views 
of  particular  passages  for  the  benefit  of  the  whole,  but 
also  ordinary  members  of  the  Church,  if  qualified  by  grace 
and  nature  for  the  duty.  Now,  meetings  of  exactly  this 
primitive  character  were  established  in  the  north  at  the 
time  of  the  revival ;  and  in  several  districts  of  the  country 
they  still  continue  to  be  held. 

A  text  of  Scripture  is  proposed  as  an  exercise  at  the 
opening  of  the  meeting;  and,  in  the  manner  prescribed  in 
the  First  Book  of  Discipline,  the  individuals  who  take  part 
in  it  rise  in  succession,  either  to  propound  their  views  of 
the  passage,  or  to  adduce  from  their  own  peculiar  experi- 
ence facts  illustrative  of  its  truth.  We  have  listened  with 
wonder  to  the  extempore  addresses  delivered  at  some  of 
these  meetings  by  untaught  men,  —  men  from  remote  up- 
land districts,  who  had  derived  their  sole  knowledge  of 
religion  from  meditation  and  the  Bible.  Their  simple 
truthfulness  and  earnest  fervor ;  their  exhibition  of  the 
workings  of  the  human  heart  under  the  opposing  influences 
of  good  and  evil ;  their  viev/s  of  the  efiects  of  the  reno- 
vating principle  on  the  one  hand,  and  the  original  deprav- 
ity, acted  upon  by  temptation,  on  the  other  ;  their  enumer- 
ation of  the  various  stages  through  which  the  pilgrim  has 
to  pass,  and  the  changes  eflfected  in  his  views  and  opinions, 
—  all  these,  in  at  least  the  choicer  j)assages,  have  power- 
fully reminded  usof  Bunyan  —  the  unapproachable  Shaks- 
peare  of  Christian  literature.     The  individuals  who  take 


THE   COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY.       225 

part  in  these  meetings  are  emphatically  termed  "  the  menr 
Though  generally  elders  of  the  Church,  they  are  not  inva- 
riably so.  Death  is  fast  wearing  them  out.  We  have  seen 
in  one  parish  church,  in  the  north,  the  elders'  pew  filled 
with  them  from  end  to  end, — all  worthies  of  the  right 
stamp,  who  would  have  joyfully  betaken  themselves  to  the 
hill-side  in  the  present  quarrel;  but  their  honored  heads 
are  all  low  to-day. 

Now,  there  are  three  points  to  which  we  would  recall 
the  attention  of  the  reader.  The  striking  contrast  between 
the  manners  and  morals  of  the  people  in  this  district  when 
Christianity  was  first  introduced  among  them  with  power 
and  effect,  and  the  very  opposite  state  of  manners  and 
morals  induced  by  its  influence,  is  the  first  of  these.  It  is 
a  curious  fact,  that  the  striking  nature  of  this  contrast, 
though  all  that  remains  of  it  be  now  merely  traditional, 
has  still  a  very  marked  influence  on  the  joeople.  It  affects 
till  this  day  the  popular  estimate  of  the  religious  character. 
But,  unluckily,  the  good  Protestant  recollection  of  it  is 
associated  with  a  somewhat  Popish  feeling;  and  the  high 
respect  for  the  eminent  Christians  of  a  century  ago  is  per- 
haps not  sufficiently  tempered  by  a  recollection  of  the  only 
ground  on  which,  eminent  as  they  were,  they  could  have 
stood  in  the  presence  of  Deity.  Not  merely  is  the  pious 
ancestor  raised  high  on  a  pedestal  over  the  descendant,  but 
that  very  pedestal  proves  also  a  stumbling-block  to  the 
descendant.  We  need  only  advert  to  the  second  point,  as 
corresponding  in  character  to  the  first.  Nothing  easier 
than  to  anticipate  the  effects  on  people  so  predisposed,  of 
those  sentiments  of  awe  and  veneration  necessarily  inspired 
by  the  belief  that  the  more  eminent  Christians  of  the  dis- 
trict had  received,  in  their  close  walk  with  God,  like  the 
Pedens  and  Cargills  of  a  former  age,  gifts  and  powers  of 
an  extraordinary  character,  through  which  they  were  at 
times  enabled  to  triifmph  signally  over  the  invisible  ene- 
mies of  another  world,  and  at  times  to  discern  afar  off  the 


226       THE   COMMUNICANTS    OF   THE   NORTH   COUNTRY. 

form  and  color  of  events  while  yet  enveloped  in  the  uncer- 
tain obscurity  of  the  future. 

The  peculiar  character  and  constitution  of  what  we  may 
terra  the  meetings  of  the  men  is  the  third  point  to  Avhich 
we  would  direct  the  attention  of  the  reader.  With  much, 
doubtless,  that  is  excellent  in  tliem,  they  operate  in  the 
track  of  the  traditional  recollections  adverted  to.  They 
raise,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  the  standard  of 
Christian  qualification,  by  bringing  before  the  great  body 
of  the  people  the  peculiar  experiences  of  singularly  devo- 
ted and  highly  meditative  natures  as  tests  for  trying  men's 
spirits,  and  through  which  the  believer  is  to  judge  whether 
he  has  in  reality  received  of  the  Spirit  of  truth.  Now,  the 
great  bulk  of  the  population  anywhere  cannot  form  too 
lofty  ideas  of  Christian  morality  or  Christian  privilege,  nor 
is  the  estimate  formed  by  the  people  of  the  north  more  than 
adequately  high.  But  there  is  a  mixture  of  error  in  it, 
inasmuch  as  it  bears  at  least  as  direct  reference  to  experi- 
ences of  devout  natures  in  an  advanced  stage  of  the  Chris- 
tian pilgrimage,  to  gifts  very  rarely  bestowed,  and  to  at- 
tainments not  often  made,  as  to  the  infinite  merits  of  the 
full  atonement  and  the  free  grace  of  that  adorable  Being 
through  whom  the  believer  can  alone  be  rendered  worthy. 
The  effects  on  gloomy  and  melancholy  natures  —  the  Lit- 
tle Faiths,  the  Peebles,  and  the  Ready-to-Halts,  of  the 
Church — have  been  in  some  instances  very  sad.  There 
have  been  men  in  these  northern  districts  thoroughly  awak- 
ened to  a  clear  perception  of  the  realities  of  the  unseen 
world,  and  whose  lives  were  "  hid  with  Christ  in  God,"  who 
have  yet  walked  in  darkness  all  their  days,  anxious  and 
doubtful,  and  who  could  never  command  the  necessary 
confidence  to  approach  the  communion  table.  The  great 
bulk  of  the  people  stand  afar  off,  impressed  with  feelings 
like  those  which  held  back  the  Israelites  of  old  from  the 
Mount,  —  not,  be  it  remarked,  because  they  are  indifferent, 
or  deem  lightly  of  the  privilege,  but  because  they  esteem 
themselves  not  worthy.     And  hence  it  is  that  communi- 


THE    COMMUNICANTS    OF    THE    NORTH    COUNTRY.       227 

cants  in  this  northera  district  are  so  few.  ^Ye  are  acquain- 
ted with  men  who  would  lay  down  their  lives  for  tlie 
Scottish  Churcli,  and  who  have  ranged  themselves,  in  the 
present  conflict,  on  the  old  Presbyterian  side  with  all  the 
earnest  determination  of  her  first  fothers,  who  have  not  yet 
entered  into  full  communion  with  her,  and  probably  never 
will. 

IsTow,  on  the  whole,  this  state  of  matters  is  much  to  be 
regretted.  It  is  by  no  means  so  bad  a  state  as  prevails  in 
some  of  the  southern  and  midland  parishes  of  Scotland, 
where  the  lax  morality  and  imperfect  theology  of  the 
Moderate  school  has  thrown  open  the  communion  table  to 
people  of  all  characters  —  to  persons  who  live  loosely,  and 
believe  they  know  not  what,  among  the  rest.  Still,  how- 
ever, it  is  bad.  It  substitutes,  to  a  certain  degree,  the 
standard  of  what  we  may  term  a  traditional  Christianity 
for  the  Christianity  of  the  New  Testament.  It  excludes 
serious  and  good  men  from  sharing  in  a  great  privilege, 
of  which  they  will  never  be  able  to  render  themselves 
deserving,  but  which  has  been  purchased  for  them  not- 
withstanding. It  renders  the  cause  of  the  Church  less 
strong  in  her  ^^I'esent  position,  in  tlie  districts  in  wdiich  it 
obtains,  much  as  she  is  loved  and  venerated  among  their 
j^eople.  Finally,  it  lays  her  open,  in  cases  like  that  of 
Daviot,  to  the  plausible  though  unprincipled  and  unsolid 
objections  of  designing  enemies,  who  can  neither  be  made 
to  feel  nor  understand  the  vast  difference  which  exists 
between  callous  and  dead  consciences  indifferent  to  the 
truth,  and  consciences  scrupulously  tender  and  anxiously 
awake, —  between  the  practical  infidel,  who  will  not  eat  of 
tlie  children's  bread  just  because  he  has  no  appetite  for  it, 
and  the  timid  Christian,  who,  while  he  longs  after  it,  is  yet 
restrained  by  a  sense  of  his  own  unworthiness,  and  lives 
on  in  unhappiuess  without  partaking  of  it. 


228         SPIRITUAL   INDEPENDENCE   THE    DISTINCTIVE 


SPIRITUAL  INDEPENDENCE   THE    DISTINCTIVE    PRIVI- 
LEGE OF  THE  CHURCH  OF  SCOTLAND. 

We  speak  with  all  due  respect  when  we  say  that,  had 
our  ancestors  been  content  that  our  Church  should  have 
been  based  on  the  same  foundation  with  the  sister  Estab- 
lishment, they  might  have  saved  themselves  many  a 
harassing  struggle,  and  many  a  severe  and  long-protracted 
pang.  Three  succeeding  generations  of  our  countrymen 
might  have  lived  and  died  in  peace.  There  would  have 
been  no  imperative  call  to  the  battle-field  ;  no  need  to 
brave  the  dungeon  and  the  scaffold  ;  no  necessity,  when 
broken  and  discomfited  in  the  contest,  to  retire,  as  unsub- 
dued in  spirit  as  at  first,  into  the  wilder  recesses  of  the 
country,  and,  in  the  midst  of  privation,  suffering,  and  death, 
to  cherish  the  indomitable  resolution  of  maintaining  in 
unbroken  integrity  the  spiritual  independence  of  the 
Church.  We  respect  the  English  Establishment,  with 
its  long  list  of  great  and  good  men ;  but  we  are  not  to 
place  on  the  same  level  the  dearly-jiurchased  privileges  of 
our  own. 

It  is  surely  well,  since  the  struggle  threatens  to  be  a 
protracted  one,  to  be  preparing  ourselves  for  it  —  "to  be 
marking  our  bulwarks,  and  looking  well  to  our  walls." 
There  are  strong  grounds  of  hope,  and  great  cause  for 
thankfulness.  It  is  in  no  new  quarrel  that  the  Church  and 
the  people  of  Scotland  are  now  engaged ;  the  testimony 
of  the  past  bears  direct  upon  the  present  and  the  future ; 
and  we  not  only  know  that  it  is  a  righteous  quarrel,  from 
the  principles  which  it  involves,  and  because  it  was  so 
especially  the  cause  of  the  righteous  in  former  times,  but 
because  the  same  unchangeable  One  who  so  especially 
favored  it  of  old  is  in  the  same  gracious  manner  especially 
favoring  it  now.  We  have  evidence  in  our  favor  of  the 
highest  kind,  and  grounds  of  comfort  on  which  it  is  even  a 


PRIVILEGE    OF    THE    CHURCH    OF    SCOTLAND.  229 

duty  to  build.  Nor  are  the  minor  considerations  to  be 
overlooked.  We  have  read  the  history  of  Scotland  to 
very  little  purpose  if  we  are  mistaken  in  deeming  firmness 
one  of  the  main  characteristics  of  the  people.  It  is  the 
history  of  a  determined  handful,  maintaining  their  place 
and  name  among  the  nations  more  on  the  strength  of  tliis 
quality  than  on  even  that  of  their  valor  itself.  It  was 
their  firmness  which  gave  effect  to  their  valor,  and  enabled 
them  to  reap  the  fruits  of  it.  It  was  this  quality  which  of 
old,  when  English  enterprise  was  so  successful  in  Ireland 
and  France,  imparted  so  different  and  so  disastrous  a  char- 
acter and  issue  to  English  enterprise  in  Scotland.  We  see 
it  paramount  in  the  protracted  struggle  of  our  ancestors  in 
the  thirteenth  century ;  we  catch  a  glimpse  of  it  at  even 
an  earlier  period,  when  the  Dane  and  the  Vikingr  ravished 
our  coasts ;  we  read  it  legibly  inscribed  in  the  remains  of 
the  first  and  second  wall  with  which  the  Roman  belied 
his  proud  vaunt  of  conquest ;  we  see  it  standing  out  in 
high  relief,  and  encircled  with  a  halo  of  moral  glory,  in 
the  troublous  times  of  Knox  and  Wishart ;  we  see  it  fixed 
in  one  unaltered  attitude  during  the  whole  of  the  succeed- 
ing century,  unmoved  fi'om  its  place  by  the  utmost  rigor 
of  fierce  and  remorseless  persecution ;  we  see  it,  though 
miserably  misdirected  and  mistaken,  in  the  one  striking 
historical  incident  of  the  century  that  followed,  —  in  the 
enterprise  of  the  handful  of  half-disciplined  men  who 
fought  their  way  into  the  centre  of  the  sister  kingdom, 
and  bore  down  before  them  the  best  troops  of  England 
again  and  again.  Nor  has  the  character  changed  in  the 
least ;  nor  is  it  forgotten  to  what  country  the  soldiers 
belonged  who,  in  one  of  the  earlier  battles  of  the  last  war, 
scattered  in  the  charge  the  invincibles  of  Napoleon,  and 
against  whom,  in  its  latest  and  bloodiest  fight,  the  pride 
and  strength  of  France  was  thrice  disastrously  broken,  and 
which  preserved  entire  to  tlie  last  its  own  iron  wall.  There 
is  surely  ground  of  hope  that  in  this  quarrel,  so  emphati- 
cally Scotch,  so  peculiarly  popular,  so  hallowed  by  all  the 

20 


230  THE    "  GRASPING    AMEITION  " 

old  associations,  so  honored  in  the  testimonies  of  departed 
worthies,  so  thoroughly  identified  with  spiritual  religion, 
so  eminently  favored  with  the  countenance  of  Deity,  — . 
surely  there  is  ground  of  hope  that  in  this  quarrel  the 
grand  national  characteristic  will  not  fail.  Our  Church 
has  already  spoken,  and  spoken  by  her  greatest  man ;  and 
not  only  did  we  feel  the  sense  of  sacredness  and  the  high 
obligation  of  duty  which  the  pledge  involved,  but  we  felt 
also,  when  the  irrepressible  plaudits  arose  around  Chal- 
mers, that  it  was  a  Scotchman  who  had  spoken,  and  tliat 
it  was  Scotchmen  who  approved.  We  repeat  his  emphatic 
w^ords :  "  Be  it  known,  then,  to  all  men,  that  we  will  not 
retrace  a  single  footstep.  We  will  make  no  concession 
to  the  Court  of  Session  ;  and  that  not  because  of  the  dis- 
grace, but  because  of  the  gross  and  grievous  dereliction  of 
principle  which  we  would  thereby  incur.  They  may  by 
force  eject  us  out  of  our  place,  but  they  never  will  force  us 
to  surrender  our  principles  :  and  if  the  honorable  Court 
should  again  so  far  mistake  its  functions  as  to  repeat  or 
renew  its  inroads,  I  trust  they  will  again  meet  the  recep- 
tion they  have  already  gotten,  —  'To  whom  we  gave  place 
by  subjection,  no,  not  for  an  hour,  no,  not  by  a  hair- 
breadth.'" It  was  more  than  Chalmers  who  spoke  in  these 
sentences;  they  are  instinct  with  the  genius  of  the  Scot- 
tish Church,  —  they  embody  the  main  characteristic  of  the 
Scottish  people. 


THE   "GRASPING  AMBITION"   OF   THE   NON-INTRU- 
SIONISTS. 

We  have  just  seen  in  a  Liberal  London  newspaper  — 
favorable  to  the  cause  of  dissent  in  the  degree  in  which 
dissent  is  political,  and  wholly  indifferent  to  it  in  the  de- 
gree in  which  it  is  religious  —  a  smart  paragraph  on  the 
Church  question.     It  reiterates  the  charge  of  clerical  ambi- 


OF  THE   NON-INTRUSIONISTS.  231 

tion  and  usurpation  first  preferred  against  the  ministers  of 
our  Church,  in  the  present  struggle,  by  the  Dean  of  Fac- 
ulty, and  then  idly  bandied  among  his  party,  until  caught 
up  by  the  Voluntaries  in  the  manner  in  which  drowning 
men  clutch  at  straws.  But  miserably  unsuited  does  it  seem 
to  serve  their  purpose.  Our  London  contemporary  "has 
repeatedly  stated,"  he  says,  "that  the  great  object  of  the 
clerical  non-intrusionists  is  to  grasp  the  whole  patronage 
of  the  Oiurch  of  Scotland."  He  adds  further,  that  "the 
usurpers  will  ultimately  be  defeated  ;"  and  then  concludes, 
hardly  two  sentences  after,  by  asserting  that  the  balance 
in  favor  of  the  non-intrusionists  (tlie  ambitious  and  usurp- 
ing clergymen,  be  it  remembered)  was  secured  "  by  the 
burgh  elders  elected  to  the  General  Assembly  under  the 
Miinicvpal  Reform  Hill.  Well  has  it  been  remarked  that 
error  is  ever  inconsistent.  It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  things 
that  good  argument  should  fivor  a  bad  cause,  or  that  what 
is  true  should  militate  against  which  is  right. 

It  is  no  very  difficult  matter  to  say  how  a  man  such  as 
the  Dean  of  Faculty  should  be  led,  through  a  confusion  of 
ideas  natural  to  his  party  on  religious  subjects,  half  to 
believe  his  own  charge.  He,  of  course,  sees  that  the  great 
principle  for  which  the  Church  is  contending  cannot  exist 
without  mightily  strengthening  one  of  our  two  ecclesiasti- 
cal parties,  and  ultimately  wearing  out  the  other.  He  sees 
that  if  the  majority  carry  their  measure,  they  must  become 
an  immensely  more  preponderating  majority.  He  sees,  fur- 
ther, that  they  must  of  course  possess  some  measure  of 
power  as  such;  not  quite  the  sort  of  power  possessed  by 
his  friends  of  old,  but  still  a  species  of  power ;  and  seeing 
this,  and  reasoning  in  part  from  his  own  feelings,  and  in 
part  from  a  pretty  close  acquaintance  with  the  governing 
motives  of  his  party,  he  concludes  that  this  modicum  of 
power  is  the  main  object  of  the  struggle,  and,  in  accord- 
ance perhaps  with  the  professional  license,  describes  it  as 
tlie  only  object.  All  this  is  easily  understood.  It  is 
equally  obvious  that   in  every  struggle  which  terminates 


9:?0 


THE    "  GEASPING   AMBITION 


decisively,  the  conquering  party  becomes  the  more  power- 
ful one.  When  Christianity  rose  over  paganism,  Christians 
became  in  consequence  more  powerful ;  when  Protestant- 
ism rose  over  Popery,  Protestants  became  in  consequence 
more  powerful ;  when  Presbyterianism  rose  over  Prelacy, 
Presbyterians  became  in  consequence  more  powerful;  and 
there  were  no  doubt  respectable,  gross-minded  pagan,  and 
popish,  and  prelatic  gentlemen  in  those  days,  who,  like  the 
Dean  of  Faculty  in  our  own  times,  would  have  looked  to 
the  inevitable  power  as  the  actual  prize  secured  by  those 
struggles,  and  as  therefore  the  main  object  of  the  conquer- 
ing parties.  All  this,  we  repeat,  is  easily  understood  ;  and 
it  may  be  understood  at  least  equally  easily  from  the 
instances  adduced,  that  a  mere  consequence  arising  out  of 
any  measure  may  be  an  essentially  different  thing  from  the 
great  end  proposed  by  that  measure.  It  was  no  thirst  of 
power  that  Christianized  the  w^orld;  it  was  no  thirst  of 
power  that  reformed  the  Church. 

It  is  well  to  consider  further  the  mode  in  which  the 
non-intrusion  principle  can  alone  add  to  the  power  of  the 
rising  party,  by  adding,  of  course,  to  their  number.  It  can 
add  to  their  230wer  only  through  the  medium  of  the  people. 
They  are  popular;  the  people  love  them,  and  they  detest 
their  opponents.  The  non-intrusion  principle,  if  fairly 
established,  would  be  simply  a  power  conferred  on  the 
people  of  rejecting  the  men  whom  they  hate.  The  power 
of  the  popular  party  in  the  Church  would  be  a  mere  conse- 
quence, therefore,  of  the  exertion  of  this  power  on  the  part 
of  the  jDeoplc.  If  the  party  ceased  to  be  popular,  they 
would  inevitably  cease  to  be  powerful,  just  in  the  way  that 
their  unpopular  opponents  are  ceasing  to  be  powerful. 
And  this,  then,  is  the  kind  of  usurpation  and  grasping 
ambition  with  which  they  are  charged  !  They  love  the 
people,  and  the  people  love  them.  They  are  striving  to 
i:)rotect  the  people  from  the  objects  of  their  hate,  by 
extending  to  them  an  ability  of  protecting  themselves; 
and  they  are  therefore  called  ambitious,  and  usurpers. 


OF   THE   NON-INTRUSIONISTS.  233 

The  Tyrant  of  the  Cheronese 

Was  freedom's  best  and  dearest  friend. 

But  what  is  the  particular  kind  of  power  which  their 
popularly  acquired  majorities  is  to  secure  to  theui?  Power 
to  get  churches  for  their  sons  and  nephews  ?  No!  The 
people  have  been  vetoing  the  sons  and  nephews  of  very 
"worthy  men,  because,  though  they  liked  the  worthy  men 
themselves,  they  did  not  like  their  sons  and  nephews. 
What  sort  of  power,  then  ?  Power  of  a  far  nobler  and 
widely  different  character,  —  power  to  put  down  the  men 
who  used  to  force  their  sons  and  nephews  into  churches 
against  the  will  and  the  interests  of  the  people,  —  power  to 
overrule  the  counsels  of  the  hirelings  who  partook  of  the 
people's  patrimony,  but  who  wrought  not  for  the  people's 
good,  —  power  to  labor  more  and  more  effectually  for  the 
benefit  of  the  people,  —  power,  through  their  hold  of  the 
affections  of  the  peo])le,  to  spread  anew  the  blessings  of 
Christianity  among  the  masses  broken  loose  from  its  sacred 
and  humanizing  influences,  —  power  to  stem,  for  the  good 
of  the  people,  the  demoralizing  flood  of  infidelity  which 
is  threatening  to  bear  them  down,  as  it  has  borne  down 
the  millions  of  other  countries,  —  power  adequately  to  ex- 
tend to  the  people,  as  of  old,  the  blessings  of  religion  and 
the  light  of  learning. 

The  popularity  of  the  party  now  ha})pily  dominant  in 
the  Church  constitutes  more  than  their  strength ;  it  is 
founded  on  a  principle  which  renders  it  also  their  most 
powerful  recommendation.  It  was  not  by  flattering  the 
people  that  men  such  as  Knox  and  Melville  became  the 
trusted  and  beloved  leaders  of  the  people.  They  led  them 
on  the  same  high  principle  through  which  tlie  discourses 
of  our  Saviour  were  so  eminently  popular,  and  through 
which  crowds  were  attracted  by  the  preaching  of  the 
apostles,  wherever  they  went.  God,  in  his  wisdom  and 
goodness,  has  fitted  the  glad  tidings  of  salvation  which 
he  reveals  to  the  human  nature  which  he  has  made.     The 

20* 


234  THE   "  GRASPING   AMBITION,"    ETC. 

common  people  listen  gladly  to  the  gospel  now,  as  of  old, 
even  when  they  close  not  with  its  offers ;  and  the  men  who 
preach  it  in  sincerity  and  truth  partake  of  its  popularity ; 
and  hence  their  influence  with  the  congregations  whom 
they  address.  Nor  has  this  body  of  men  —  the  Evangel- 
ical ministers  of  our  country,  the  true  representatives  and 
descendants  of  our  elder  worthies  —  ever  deceived  the 
people  of  Scotland.  What  was  the  object  of  their  long- 
protracted  struggles  in  the  past  ?  Solely  and  exclusively 
the  glory  of  God  and  the  good  of  the  people.  The  history 
of  Rome  furnishes  us  with  one  example  of  a  poor  patriotic 
man  quitting  his  plough  to  lead  the  armies  of  his  country, 
and,  after  he  had  fought  her  battles  and  defeated  her  ene- 
mies, returning  a  poor  man  to  his  plough  again.  The 
history  of  the  Scottish  Church  abounds  in  such  examples ; 
the  biographies  of  all  her  better  ministers  repeat  the  story 
of  Fabricius.  Who  has  not  heard  of  the  Herculean  labors 
of  Knox,  and  Melville,  and  Calderwood,  and  Bruce,  and 
Henderson,  and  Guthrie,  and  those  of  their  noble-minded 
coadjutors  nnd  associates,  the  other  saints  and  martyrs  of 
our  Church?  Where  are  the  patrimonies  which  they 
bequeathed  to  their  children,  or  what  the  amount  of  the 
riches  which  they  hoarded?  What  was  Knox's  share  of 
the  forfeited  Church  lands?  Just  Fabricius's  share  of  the 
spoils.  Manfully  did  he  struggle  for  these  with  a  grasping 
and  selfish  aristocracy,  but  it  was  exclusively  on  the  peo- 
ple's behalf.  However  great  the  opportunities  of  accumu- 
lation possessed  by  these  men,  they  all  died  poor,  many  of 
them  in  utter  destitution;  but  their  wealth  abideth  not- 
withstanding, and  an  assembled  world  will  hear  of  it  at  the 
last  day.  We  have  but  to  look,  too,  at  the  constitution 
Avhich  they  framed  for  our  Church  to  be  convinced  that 
they  nourished  in  their  poverty  and  self-denial  no  priestly 
feeling  of  exclusiveness;  that  their  struggles  were  no 
Jesuitical  struggles  for  the  advancement  of  their  order; 
that  all  which  they  did  and  suffered  was  truly  nnd  une- 
quivocally for  the  cause  of  God  and  the  people.     With  a 


POPULAR   ESTIMATE    OF    THE   TWO    PARTIES.  235 

libei-ality  iin matched,  save  in  the  times  of  the  apostles, 
tliey  provided  that  the  layman  and  his  minister  should  sit 
together  in  their  ecclesiastical  courts  armed  with  exactly 
the  same  authority,  and  gave  to  the  people  at  large  the 
power  of  choosing  both.  The  Presbyterians  of  Scotland 
knowing  this,  and  knowing,  too,  that  the  kindred  spirits 
who  represent  tliese  worthies  in  the  present  day  are  influ- 
enced by  no  lower  motives  than  those  by  which  they  were 
animated,  and  that  they  pursue  objects  not  merely  similar, 
but  identical,  are  not  to  be  deceived  by  the  pal])ably  unjust 
charges  of  either  hireling  pleaders  or  prostitute  scribes, 
wdio,  mean-spirited  and  selfish  themselves,  have  no  heart 
to  appreciate  virtues  removed  not  only  beyond  their  prac- 
tice, but  even  beyond  their  conception.  That  body  are 
surely  worthy  of  all  trust  who  were  never  yet  found  to 
deceive. 


POPULAR  ESTIMATE   OF   THE   TWO   PARTIES. 

"Rejectioj^  without  reasons."  How  is  it  that  the  two 
great  parties  in  the  Church  have  come  to  differ  so  entirely 
on  a  point  like  this?  —  that  the  one  party  are  so  much  dis- 
l^osed  to  trust  to  the  people,  and  the  other  so  determined 
to  place  no  confidence  in  them,  unless  they  cannot  possibly 
help  it  ?  The  question  is  a  very  simple  one,  but  the  reply 
involves  some  rather  important  principles. 

It  is  a  striking  fact,  but  not  the  less  a  certain  one,  that 
the  men  most  generally  beloved  and  respected  by  the 
Presbyterians  of  Scotland,  and  the  men  most  thoroughly 
disliked  and  despised  by  them,  have  been  members  of  the 
same  profession,  and  have  belonged  to  the  same  body. 
The  political  field  north  of  tlie  Tweed  has  hitherto  been 
singularly  barren  in  patriotism.  We  have  a  few  names 
which  belong  to  our  earlier  struggles  with  England  that 
are  worth  remembering,  and  that  we  are  not  at  all  likely 
soon  to  forget;  but  the   Scottish  politicians   of  the  after 


236  POPULAR   ESTIMATE 

ages  are  of  a  very  questionable  character  indeed.  Contrast 
our  history  in  this  respect  with  that  of  EngUind.  Where 
are  our  Hampdens,  our  Seldens,  our  Russells,  our  Algernon 
Sidneys,  —  where  even  our  gallant  and  generous  spirits, 
noble  and  disinterested  on  a  basis  of  romance,  —  our  Sir 
Philip  Sidneys  and  Sir  Walter  Raleighs?  Scotland  reck- 
ons no  such  names  among  those  of  her  statesmen  of  the 
last  three  centuries.  The  soil  has  been  unfavorable  to 
patriotism  ;  the  people,  in  consequence,  down  to  a  recent 
date,  had  no  political  existence.  We  have  had  great 
abundance  of  crafty  politicians,  —  Mortons,  and  Maitlands, 
and  Middletons,  —  men  bent  on  the  aggrandizement  of 
themselves  and  their  families,  and  as  faithful  to  their  mas- 
ters as  their  natures  allowed ;  but  we  have  had  no  patriots, 
if,  indeed,  we  do  not  except  Fletcher,  of  Salton ;  and  so 
much  was  he  a  republican  of  the  old  school,  that  he  would 
only  have  set  free  one-half  the  people,  and  made  the  other 
half  slaves.  Certain  it  is,  however,  that  Scotland  has  her 
revered  and  honored  names  notwithstanding,  —  names  in 
no  respect  inferior  to  those  of  England,  and  now,  after  the 
lapse  of  centuries,  much  better  known  to  the  people.  For 
every  Englishman  who  knows  anything  of  Hampden,  we 
will  find  at  least  twenty  Scotchmen  who  love  and  venerate 
the  memory  of  Knox.  All  the  true  patriots  of  our  country 
—  the  men  who  stood  out  disinterestedly  in  the  cause  of 
the  people,  and  elevated  them  by  their  labors  in  the  moral 
and  intellectual  scale  —  have  been  either  ministers  of  the 
Church,  or  persons  who  had  caught  from  them  the  truly 
liberal  spirit  which  genuine  Christianity  never  fails  to 
infuse.  Who  was  it  that  first  addressed  his  "beloved 
brethren"  the  "commonality,"  at  a  time  when  they  were 
sunk  in  the  slavery  of  vassalage,  and  told  them  of  a  high 
spiritual  level  on  which,  as  immortal  creatures  for  whom 
Christ  had  died,  they  were  no  whit  inferior  to  their  mas- 
ters? Who  was  it  that  assured  them  that,  "albeit  God 
had  ordained  distinction  and  difference  in  the  administra- 
tion of  civil  policies  betwixt  kings  and  subjects,  rulers  and 


OF   THE   TWO    PARTIES.  237 

common  people,  yet  in  the  hope  of  the  life  to  come  he  had 
mfide  all  equal "  ?  Who  but  the  greatest  and  the  noblest 
of  our  patriots,  —  the  man  whose  large-minded  educational 
schemes  are  still  half  a  century  ahead  of  our  age,  —  who 
shared  his  principles  and  maxims  of  political  liberty  with 
his  friend,  tlie  elegant  and  masculine-minded  Buchanan, — 
"principles  and  maxims,"  says  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  "de- 
livered with  a  i^recision  and  enforced  with  an  energy  which 
no  former  age  has  equalled,  and  no  succeeding  age  has 
surpassed,"  and  the  liberality  of  whose  ecclesiastical  polity 
our  better  Churchmen  are  even  now  striving  at  a  distance 
to  approach  ?  There  is  little  wonder  that  the  people  of 
Scotland  should  continue  to  cherish  and  venerate  the 
memory  of  Knox. 

Our  great  reformer  is  the  true  type  and  representative 
of  the  popular  party,  —  the  Christian  patriots  of  Scotland. 
It  is  no  difficult  or  uninteresting  matter  to  trace  the  line 
through  our  country's  history,  from  the  days  of  Mary 
downwards.  There  is,  in  truth,  not  much  else  on  which 
the  eye  can  rest  with  pleasure.  Unquestionably  the  author 
of  the  "  Scots  Worthies"  gave  his  book  the  right  name. 
The  men  whose  biographies  he  relates  were  emphatically 
the  worthies  of  Scotland ;  and  the  popularity  of  the  work 
shows  how  decidedly  the  great  bulk  of  the  population  have 
acquiesced  in  the  propriety  of  the  title.  Nor  is  the  pop- 
ularity of  the  party  less  shown  by  the  history  of  our  Church 
in  the  last  century  than  by  that  of  the  century  which  went 
before.  Who  but  the  Erskines  and  their  followers  could 
have  led  away  from  the  Established  Church  five  hundred 
congregations  of  Scottish  Presbyterians  warmly  attached 
to  the  Church  of  their  flithers?  We  have  been  much 
impressed  by  the  abiding  character  of  the  memory  and 
influence  of  ministers  of  the  true  stamp  in  our  country 
districts.  There  are  individuals  of  no  other  class  so  long 
remembered  by  the  people  of  Scotland  ;  striking  passages 
from  their  oral  discourses,  only  once  delivered,  sometimes 
survive  the  men   themselves  for  two   whole  generations. 


238  POPULAR   ESTIMATE 

Even  ill  our  larger  towns,  where  the  popuhition  are  more 
in  a  state  of  flux,  half  a  centary  hardly  succeeds  in  effiicing 
the  cherished  recollection  of  an  eminent  minister.  Dr. 
Balfour,  of  Glasgow,  is  better  remembered  in  that  city 
than  any  other  man  connected  with  the  place  who  died  so 
many  years  ago  ;  and  we  question  whether  the  recollection 
of  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  is  not  more  deeply  impressed  on 
the  mind  of  the  Edinburgh  people,  members  of  the  Church, 
than  that  of  any  other  citizen  whose  career  of  eminence  and 
usefulness  terminated  within  the  present  century.  There 
does  not  exist  a  tenderer  or  more  enduring  tie  among  all 
the  various  relationships  which  knit  together  the  human 
family,  than  that  which  binds  the  gospel  minister  to  his 
people. 

It  is  not  less  certain,  however,  that  there  is  a  very  con- 
siderable portion  of  our  Scottish  clergy  less  popular,  and 
regarded  more  generally  with  jealous  dislike,  than  any 
other  class  in  the  country ;  nor  is  it  any  hatred  of  the 
order  through  which  they  suffer,  for  it  is  identically  the 
same  portion  of  the  people  who  most  venerate  their  breth- 
ren that  most  dislike  them.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten  the 
minister  of  a  country  parish  is  either  the  man  most  loved 
and  respected  in  it,  or  the  man  least  cared  for,  and  against 
whom  the  strongest  prejudice  is  entertained.  Half  the 
witticisms  of  the  country  have  been  made  at  the  expense 
of  the  cloth;  and  it  will  invariably  be  found  that  the  more 
secular-minded  the  clergy  of  a  district  become,  the  more 
readily  will  these  be  picked  up  and  repeated.  The  mere 
fact  of  their  existence  shows  nothing.  Shimei  cursed 
David;  the  dragoons  of  the  times  of  Charles  II.  were 
merry  at  the  expense  of  the  men  whom  they  j^ersecuted 
and  murdered.  Moderatism  in  Strathbogie  has  been  pro- 
fane in  bad  rhyme  in  attempting  to  be  smart  on  some  of 
the  most  revered  ministers  of  our  Church ;  and  an  Edin- 
burgh artist,  who  has  humor  enough  to  make  capital  cari- 
catures, and  wisdom  enough  not  to  publish  his  creed,  has 
been  folio  win  <r  in  the  same  track.     But  in  all  these,  and  in 


OF    THE    TWO    PARTIES.  239 

similar  instances,  the  joke  meets  with  no  response  in  the 
public  mind.  Very  different  is  the  case,  however,  when  it 
affects  a  degraded  and  earthly-minded  clergy.  Tliere  is  a 
disposition  to  receive  and  repeat.  Dr.  Johnson,  with  all 
his  high  respect  for  the  English  Church,  could  yet  solemnly 
assure  Boswell,  in  one  of  his  serious  moods,  that  he  had 
scarce  ever  met  with  a  pious  clergyman.  The  time  (that 
of  the  reign  of  Moderatism  in  our  own  country)  was  un- 
questionably a  time  of  spiritual  death  in  the  sister  Estab- 
lishment. And  it  is  well  to  remember  that  this  was  also 
the  time  when  clergymen  were  the  subjects  of  ridicule 
among  every  class  of  the  English  people,  high  and  low, 
and  the  butts  of  almost  every  company.  It  was  the  atro- 
cities of  the  French  Revolution  that  first  secured  some 
little  degree  of  respect  for  the  cloth  in  the  upper  walks  of 
society,  by  showing  that  even  the  husk  of  religion,  the 
mere  empty  shell,  could  not  be  safely  slighted.  Christian 
clergymen  cannot  occupy  with  comfort  a  middle  place; 
they  cannot  rest  in  the  mere  mediocrity  of  their  station  as 
gentlemen  of  from  three  to  four  hundred  a  year;  and  we 
accept  it  as  one  of  the  many  proofs  of  the  excellence  of 
religion  that  such  is  the  case.  Even  the  men  who  do  not 
profess  to  believe  in  Christianity  at  all,  tacitly  confess  how 
highly  they  estimate  its  value,  by  the  severity  of  their 
animadversions  on  unfaithful  clergymen,  and  the  high 
standard  of  morality  and  extensive  usefulness  by  which 
they  try  them.  No  one  ever  expects  morals  of  a  high 
tone,  or  usefulness  of  a  signal  character,  from  the  priests 
of  a  false  religion.  Their  duties  are  comprised  in  a  mis- 
erable round  of  absurd  rites  and  ceremonies;  and  if  they 
do  no  positive  mischief,  —  if  they  be  content  with  simply 
doing  nothing,  —  we  think  they  do  well.  But  members 
of  a  Christian  ministry  are  tried  by  another  standard. 

Hence  one  great  cause  of  the  unpopularity  of  the  body 
now  the  minority  in  the  Church.  But  there  are  other 
causes  besides.  The  Moderate  school  is  singularly  unfa- 
vorable to  the  production  of  popular  talent  in  the  ministry. 


240  POPULAR    ESTIMATE    OF    THE   TWO    PARTIES. 

It  h;is  unquestionably  produced  some  very  able  men. 
Robertson  was  only  inferior  to  his  friend  and  contempo- 
rary Hume;  and  the  sermons  of  Blair,  though  occasionally 
heavy,  are  nearly  as  finished  pieces  of  composition  as  the 
Loungers  and  Mirrors  of  M'Kenzie.  But  though  such 
men,  when  they  exerted  themselves,  could  no  doubt  be 
listened  to  from  the  pulpit  w^ith  a  good  deal  of  intellectual 
gratification,  the  preachers  of  this  school,  regarded  as  a 
body,  have  been  miserably  tame  and  inefficient.  In  truth, 
Scotland  does  not  produce  talent  enough,  even  were  the 
whole  of  it  engaged  in  the  Church,  to  fill  her  thousand 
pulpits  with  Moderate  ministers  of  but  middling  interest 
as  preachers;  and  ordinary  men  are  totally  unsuited  to 
make  an  impression.  What  is  there  within  the  reach  of 
such  ?  The  commonplaces  of  morality  dressed  up  in  the 
merest  commonplaces  of  language,  —  the  gum-flowers  of 
false  rhetoric  all  fashioned  after  one  tame  jjattern,  —  the 
offensive  pulings  of  a  sickly  sentimentality ;  really  there  is 
little  to  w'onder  at  in  finding  the  churches  where  such 
ministers  preach  deserted  by  more  than  half  their  people, 
and  the  rest  fallen  fast  asleep.  Are  our  readers  acquainted, 
however,  with  the  case  of  men  of  even  this  stamp  awak- 
ened in  the  middle  of  their  indifference  to  a  pervading 
sense  of  the  importance  of  the  one  thing  needful  ?  —  of 
men  of  ordinary  powers  who  preached  inefficiently  for 
years,  and  then  became  converts  to  the  truth?  We  are 
acquainted  with  cases  of  this  kind.  We  are  convinced,  too, 
that  there  are  few  districts  in  Scotland  in  which  our  read- 
ers have  not  either  known  or  heard  of  such,  and  have  not 
been  struck,  like  ourselves,  by  the  degree  of  popular  talent 
which  the  change  seemed  at  once  to  communicate.  No 
doubt  a  great  deal  must  have  depended,  as  it  always  does 
in  such  casCvS,  on  the  new  tone  of  earnestness  imparted  to 
the  preacher.  Men  who  wish  to  aflfect  others  must  first  be 
affected  themselves.  Much  must  have  depended,  too,  on 
the  whole  mind  being  brought  into  play,  —  not  the  intel- 
lectual part  merely,  but  the  affections  and  the  sentiments 


THE   EARL    OF    ABERDEEN'S   BILL.  241 

also.  The  grand  difference,  however,  must  have  consisted 
in  the  newly-acquired  anxiety  to  communicate  the  revealed 
truths  of  God,  instead  of  the  mere  cogitations  of  the 
speaker.  The  change  substituted  the  scheme  of  salvation, 
in  all  its  infinite  wisdom,  for  the  jejune  reflections  and 
tame,  inefficient  moralizings  of  an  ordinary  man.  Boston 
and  Willison  were  by  no  means  superior  men  to  Blair  and 
Logan,  and  certainly  far  inferior  writers:  wdiy  are  they  in 
such  high  repute  among  the  people  of  Scotland,  and  the 
others  left  to  tlie  admiration  of  Moderate  ministers  and 
their  supporters?  Simply  from  their  being  what  the  more 
fashionable  divines  w^ere  not  —  faithful  interpreters  of  the 
mind  of  God. 

Hence  one  of  the  most  gratifying  circumstances  con- 
nected with  the  popularity  of  the  dominant  party.  It  is 
not  a  popularity  unworthily  acquired.  It  does  not  even 
result  from  the  gratitude  of  the  people  for  important  ser- 
vices rendered  to  them  in  the  past,  though  this,  no  doubt, 
has  its  influence.  It  arises  chiefly  from  the  nice  adapta- 
tion which  exists  between  the  popular  mind  and  the  truths 
of  revelation,  and  the  natural  attachment  which  obtains 
between  the  faithful  preacher  and  his  flock.  And  hence, 
too,  the  importance  of  what  we  may  term  the  shibboleth 
of  the  party,  "  rejection  without  reasons,"  and  the  dreaded 
abhorrence  with  which  the  Moderate  section  regard  it. 
They  have  translated  the  phrase  aright  in  its  bearing  on 
themselves,  and  find  that  it  embodies  exactly  the  same 
meaning  with  the  handwriting  on  the  wall. 


THE  EARL   OF  ABERDEEN'S  BILL. 

The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  brought  forward,  on  Tuesday 
last,  his  long-expected  bill  on  the  Church  question.  Cow- 
per  tells  us  of  men  who  "do  nothing  with  a  deal  of  skill." 
His  lordship  has  been  doing  nearly  as  much  without  the 

21 


242  THE   EARL   OP   ABERDEEN'S    BILL. 

skill.  He  proposes  to  reenact  an  already  existing  law, 
which  has  certainly  not  been  suffered  to  fall  into  desue- 
tude, and  to  do  for  the  Church  what  he  confesses  the 
Church,  in  even  her  present  circumstances,  can  do  for 
herself  In  one  important  respect,  however,  the  proposed 
measure  is  better  than  if  it  had  not  been  so  bad.  It  will, 
no  doubt,  satisfy  Dr.  Cook  and  his  friends,  for  it  does  not 
contain  a  single  clause  which  miofht  not  have  emanated 
from  the  Doctor  himself.  Dr.  Muir  would  perhaps  have 
framed  a  somewhat  more  liberal  measure,  though  he,  too, 
will  soon  be  able  to  accommodate  himself  to  its  peculiari- 
ties, just  as  he  learned  to  accommodate  himself  to  the 
policy  of  Dr.  Cook.  But  no  individual  who  voted  with 
Dr.  Chalmers  can  consistently  acquiesce  in  the  bill  intro- 
duced by  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  It  will  satisfy  all  the 
friends  of  unrestricted  patronage  and  the  old  system,  but 
it  will  not  have  the  effect  of  dividing  the  friends  of  a  still 
older  and  immensely  better  system.  It  will  satisfy  the 
class  who  never  yet  satisfied  the  people;  but  the  people 
and  their  friends  it  will  not  satisfy,  nor  will  it  have  the 
effect,  we  trust,  of  breaking  down  the  majorities  of  the 
latter. 

"  The  people  have  at  present  the  right,"  says  the  Dean 
of  Faculty,  in  his  pamphlet,  —  "and  that  they  should  have 
it  is  most  fitting,  —  of  submitting  every  ground  of  objection, 
of  whatever  kind,  which  they  may  entertain  against  the 
individual,  to  the  clergymen  of  the  presbytery."  Tlie 
Earl  of  Aberdeen,  in  his  outline  of  the  proposed  bill,  says 
nearly  the  same  thing,  only  he  says  it  in  more  words. 
The  patron  presents  to  the  vacant  parish ;  and  the  licen- 
tiate, his  choice,  appears  before  the  presbytery,  who  ap- 
point him  to  preach  in  the  parish  cliurch  to  the  people. 
The  people  then  meet ;  and  if  the  regular  communicants 
have  objections  to  urge  of  any  kind,  the  presbytery  receive 
these,  either  in  writing  or  otherwise.  They  next  sit  and 
decide  upon  them.  If  they  are  held  to  be  insufficient,  the 
settlement  j^roceeds,  and  the  presentee  is  intruded   upon 


THE    EARL    OF   ABERDEEN'S   BILL.  243 

the  people ;  but  if  the  presbytery  deem  them  of  sufficient 
force,  he  is  set  aside,  and  the  patron  presents  another. 
And  such  are  the  main  provisions  of  the  bill  introduced  by 
the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  What  measure  of  protection  does 
it  furnish  which  did  not  exist  under  the  old  system  ?  It 
adds,  perhaps,  in  some  slight  degree,  to  the  power  of  our 
Church  courts;  and  yet  that  power  was  certainly  very 
considerable  before.  We  find  it  stated  by  the  Dean  of 
Faculty,  that  he  is  aware  of  no  limit  either  to  the  nature 
of  the  inquiries,  or  to  the  strictness  of  the  examinations,  to 
which  presbyteries  may  subject  licentiates.  The  Church 
may  reject,  he  asserts,  on  any  ground  whatever.  It  has 
unlimited  authority  to  set  aside,  —  unlimited  authority  to 
choose.  Now,  if  this  view  of  the  matter  be  correct,  the 
Earl  of  Aberdeen,  as  we  have  said,  is  merely  reenacting  an 
existing  law ;  he  is  virtually  doing  nothing,  and  doing  it 
at  a  considerable  expense.  But,  granting  that  it  is  not 
strictly  correct,  —  granting  that  some  little  additional 
power  is  conferred  on  our  Church  courts,  —  what  are  the 
Presbyterian  people  of  Scotland  to  gain  in  consequence? 
What  benefits  did  they  derive  from  the  power  vested  in 
our  Church  courts  for  the  greater  part  of  the  last  century, 
or  in  what  degree  would  they  have  profited  had  that 
power  been  rendered  a  very  little  greater  ?  It  was  a 
power  in  almost  every  instance  employed  either  against 
themselves  or  against  the  true  types  and  representatives 
of  the  original  Church,  —  the  pious  and  devoted  ministers 
whom  they  most  loved  and  honored.  Popular  privileges 
are  essentially  dififerent  things  from  powers  conferred  on 
Church  courts;  and  we  would  just  request  our  readers  to 
mark  how  ready  the  very  men  who  are  most  forward  in 
calumniating  our  better  ministers,  and  in  raising  against 
them  the  cry  of  clerical  ambition  and  clerical  usurpation, 
are  to  extend  to  them,  notwithstanding,  those  very  powers 
which  they  unjustly  accuse  them  of  coveting,  and  how 
sedulously  they  would  withhold  every  shadow  of  popular 
privilege.    They  })rofess  to  dread  the  encroachments  of  the 


244 

clergy,  but  it  is  only  to  conceal  how  bitterly  they  dislike 
all  interference  on  the  part  of  the  people. 

It  is  scarce  necessary  to  pass  over  the  various  statements 
of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen.  He  quotes  the  First  Book  of 
Discipline  after  exactly  the  same  fashion  as  Messrs.  Paul 
and  Pirie,  and  proves,  to  the  satisfaction  of  his  peers,  that 
the  scheme  of  planting  vacant  parishes  laid  down  by  Knox 
—  a  scheme  of  free  election,  be  it  remembered  —  was  less 
popular  than  the  one  embodied  in  the  veto  act.  The 
Upper  House  was,  of  course,  no  place  in  which  his  lordship 
had  any  chance  of  being  set  right  on  the  point.  To  the 
theology  of  the  question  there  is  no  reference.  The  seven 
suspended  ministers  are  respectable;  nor  do  legislators, 
like  his  lordship,  often  look  higher.  Men  who  are  too 
virtuous  to  be  punished  as  immoral  are  quite  suited  to 
teach  religious  truth;  and  to  urge  that  there  is  a  very 
opposite  doctrine  in  the  Bible  w^ould  of  course  be  fanati- 
cal. And  yet  it  does  seem  but  common  sense  to  draw  a 
distinction  between  negative  and  positive  character;  nor 
does  it  appear  very  absurd  to  assert  that  men  amenable  to 
no  law  may  be  totally  devoid  of  religion.  Let  us  suppose 
his  lordship's  bill  in  its  present  form  enacted  into  statute 
and  acquiesced  in  by  a  majority  of  the  Church.  What 
would  be  the  probable,  nay,  the  inevitable,  consequences  ? 
The  Presbyterian  people  of  the  country  have  been  thor- 
oughly aroused  on  the  agitated  question,  and  aroused  as  a 
body.  At  no  time  were  they  indifferent  to  the  principle 
which  it  involves,  and  very  keenly  could  they  feel,  and 
very  promptly  could  they  act  upon  it.  In  what  cases  have 
the  military  been  employed  against  the  peasantry  of  Scot- 
land since  the  rebellion  of  1745,  except  in  cases  of  forced 
settlements?  Or  in  what  other  cases  have  handfuls  of 
poor  laboring  men  extended  their  hours  of  labor,  and  lived 
still  more  hardly  than  before,  that  they  might  raise  their 
fifties  and  hundreds  of  pounds,  —  at  first,  to  contend  hope- 
lessly in  our  courts  of  law  against  the  intrusion  of  ministers 
whom  in  their  conscience  they  believed  not  suited  to  edify 


THE   EARL   OF   ABERDEEN'S    BILL.  245 

them  ;  and  latterly,  to  build  chapels  for  themselves,  and 
support  clergymen  of  their  own  choosing,  to  whose  minis- 
trations they  could  trust?  Never  did  tliey  cease  to  feel 
Dn  the  subject ;  but  hitherto  they  have  been  aroused  to 
act  or  resist  merely  in  detail,  —  aroused  by  parishes  at  a 
time.  They  are  now  aroused  in  a  body;  and  tremendous 
will  be  the  revulsion  of  feeling  if  they  find  they  have 
been  deceived,  and  see  the  ministers  in  whom  they  trusted 
deserting  them.  We  would  say  to  our  clergymen,  there- 
fore, only  give  up  the  true  non-intrusion  pri^iples  em- 
bodied in  the  veto  act,  and  you  will  soon  find  how  fatal 
an  error  it  was  ever  to  have  agitated  them.  Had  you 
contented  yourselves  with  the  provisions  of  the  old  sys- 
tem, and  sujBTered  Dr.  Cook  or  Dr.  Muir  to  direct  your 
councils,  you  might  probably  have  continued  to  exist 
as  an  Establishment  for  thirty  years:  retreat  from  the 
advanced  position  which  you  have  taken  up,  and  you  will 
be  down  in  one-third  of  the  time.  You  will  find  in  the 
supposed  case  the  descent  of  a  falling  Church  regulated 
by  the  laws  which  accelerate  the  descent  of  other  falling 
bodies,  and  fearfully  increasing  its  rapidity  in  the  succeed- 
ing periods.  Nor  will  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  be  able  to 
j^rotect  or  support  you.  He  will  be  wholly  unable  to 
protect  or  support  himself.  Yield  to  his  counsels,  and 
timorously  retreat,  —  give  up  the  cause  of  the  people,  — 
and  you  will  o^o  down  first,  and  he  will  follow  you.  Con- 
tinue to  occupy  the  Thermopylae  in  which  you  have  taken 
up  your  position,  and  both  may  be  saved.  Your  place  is 
not  a  new  one  to  the  venerated  ministers  and  elders  of  tlie 
much-loved  Church  of  our  fathers;  but  never,  perhaps,  at 
any  period,  did  so  much  depend  on  their  decision  as  now 
depends  on  yours. 

Supposing,  however,  that  there  should  be  no  revulsion 
of  feeling  on  the  part  of  the  people,  —  supposing  that  they 
should  at  once  sit  down  under  the  disappointment  as 
quietly  and  passively  as  if  all  their  present  excitement  was 
mei^ely  simulated,  —  how  would  Lord  Aberdeen's  measure 

21* 


246  THE    EARL    OF   ABERDEEN'S    BILL. 

operate  in  their  behalf?  We  all  know  the  kind  of  acquire- 
ments which  enabled  the  intriisionists  of  the  last  and  the 
present  century  to  pass  through  the  sort  of  vestibule  formed 
by  presbyteries  into  the  body  of  the  Church :  a  little  tol- 
erable Latin,  and  a  little  somewhat  less  tolerable  Greek; 
the  general  smattering  of  learning  which  enables  clever 
young  men  to  write  indifferent  sense  in  middling  bad  Eng- 
lish, and  justifies  their  high  opinion  of  themselves;  and, 
withal,  that  acquaintance  with  theology  which  implies  a 
sort  of  half-knowledge  of  doctrines  which  they  do  not  like, 
and  wdiich  they  cannot  understand.  Add  to  all  this  a  degree 
of  character  which  no  police  court  in  the  kingdom  would 
be  able  to  impugn,  and  we  have  before  us  the  qualifications 
of  an  accomplished  licentiate  prepared  for  ordination,  an 
ornament  to  his  order,  and  fitted,  according  to  the  estimate 
of  Moderate  presbyteries,  to  carry  away  the  palm  from 
Horsley.  The  people  could  neither  love  nor  respect  such 
a  man,  and  by  the  more  serious  among  them  the  less  would 
he  be  loved  and  respected.  Who  that  truly  believes  in  the 
New  Testament  can  think  without  concern  of  such  a  cler- 
gyman in  connection  with  a  parishioner  anxiously  awak- 
ened to  inquire,  with  the  jailer,  "What  shall  I  do  to  be 
saved?"  —  or  without  horror  of  him,  associated  with  ter- 
rors awakened  on  a  death-bed,  —  terrors  regarding  a  future 
state  of  being,  of  which  he  knows  nothing,  and  for  which 
he  cares  as  little  ?  He  is  presented,  however,  by  the  pa- 
tron ;  and  these  feelings  on  the  part  of  the  people,  through 
which  he  is  rendered  unacceptable  to  them,  are  not  per- 
mitted, by  his  lordship's  provision,  to  weigh  as  anything. 
There  is  not  a  more  definite  assertion  in  his  whole  speech 
than  that  the  mere  unacceptableness  of  a  presentee  should 
be  held  no  disqualification.  The  people  must  render  their 
reasons.  To  aftirm  that  in  their  consciences  they  believe 
the  presentee  unsuited  to  edify  them,  is  not  stating  a  rea- 
son ;  it  is  merely  expressing  a  belief,  —  merely  emitting 
such  a  declaration  as  the  one  required  by  the  veto  act. 
But,  even  permitting  it  to  stand  as  a  reason,  what  weight 


THE   EARL   OF  ABERDEEN'S   BILL.  247 

would  the  suspended  ministers  of  Strathbogie  attach  to  it 
if  urged  by  the  parishioners  of  Marnoch  against  Mr.  Ed- 
wards ?  or  into  what  else  would  it  resolve  itself,  if  carried 
before  the  higher  courts,  than  into  mere  unacceptableness? 
The  "  sheep  know  the  voice  of  the  good  shepherd,  and  hira 
they  follow ; "  but  they  will  not  follow  a  stranger.  Why  ? 
Because,  believing  him  to  be  a  stranger,  he  is  unacceptable 
to  them.  Even  supposing  our  Church  courts  disposed  at 
the  present  time  to  receive  as  legitimate  almost  any  objec- 
tions, and  to  act  upon  them,  what  guarantee  have  the  peo- 
ple that  this  spirit  is  to  continue  ?  "  Good  is  ever  strongest 
at  its  beginning,"  says  Bacon  ;  "  evil  ever  strongest  in  con- 
tinuance." The  one  exists  only  through  unceasing  effort ; 
the  other  gathers  strength  and  grows  up  of  itself.  We 
remark,  further,  that  we  could  not  think  very  highly  of 
even  the  honesty  of  men  who,  when  deciding  cases  on  un- 
confessed  and  disallowed  grounds,  could  yet  hypocritically 
urge  that  they  decided  them  on  grounds  of  an  entirely  dif- 
ferent kind.  If  unacceptableness  is  not  to  be  recognized 
as  a  legitimate  cause  of  rejection,  we  would  ill  like  to  see 
it  made  an  actual  cause,  and  some  unsolid  and  paltry 
shadow  of  objection  employed  to  screen  it,  meanwhile,  as 
a  sort  of  stalking-horse.  Let  the  Church  of  Scotland  walk 
in  unsullied  integrity,  as  becomes  her  character,  —  her 
motives  and  her  actions  alike  open  to  the  eye  of  day. 

No  one  could  have  anticipated,  when  she  took  up  her 
present  position,  the  length  to  which  matters  were  to  be 
carried  against  her.  Doubts  were  perhaps  entertained 
whether  her  hold  of  the  secularities  might  not  possibly  be 
loosened  by  an  enforcement  of  the  principle  of  the  veto; 
but  could  even  the  shrewdest  have  imagined  that  she  was 
to  be  inhibited  from  preaching  the  gospel  ?  It  was  perhaps 
deemed  possible  that  the  civil  power  might  attempt  pounc- 
ing on  her  temporalities,  but  it  was  not  deemed  possible 
that  the  civil  power  would  attempt  jostling  her  aside  from 
her  own  proper  place  among  things  spiritual.  She  has 
been  exposed  to  unlooked-for  trouble.     The  tempest  has 


248  THE   SCOTCH   PEOPLE 

been  unexjoectedly  severe ;  and  mariners  are  sometimes 
content  in  such  circumstances  to  return  for  shelter  to 
the  port  which  they  have  quitted.  But  what  might  be 
safety  to  them  would  be  destruction  to  her.  The  heavily 
freighted  and  laboring  vessel  of  the  Church  must  not 
return.  There  is  security  in  the  haven  to  which  she  is 
bound.  On  the  open  sea,  too,  there  is  comparative  safety, 
let  the  storm  rage  as  it  may;  but  inevitable  shipwreck 
awaits  her  if  she  turn  her  prow  towards  the  shore  which 
she  has  left. 


THE    SCOTCH    PEOPLE    AND    THE    PRESBYTERIAN 
CHURCH. 

The  people  of  Scotland  have  had  many  compliments 
paid  them,  —  some  on  the  score  of  intelligence,  some  on 
the  score  of  conduct;  and  that  portion  of  them  on  whom, 
according  to  Wordsworth,  "the  Church  has  laid  the  strong 
hand  of  her  purity,"  has  been  ever  held  to  comprise,  in  the 
true,  not  the  aristocratic  sense  of  the  term,  their  "better 
classes."  The  numeious  body  of  whom  the  Cottar  of  Burns 
and  the  Peddler  of  "The  Excursion"  may  be  regarded  as 
samples  and  specimens,  are  invariably  to  be  found  in  com- 
munion with  either  the  Established  Church,  or  some  one 
or  other  of  the  several  branches  of  Evangelical  Dissenters 
which  have  sprung  from  her.  Who  ever  heard  of  an 
intelligent  Scotch  Papist  rising  from  among  the  people  ? 
or  where  are  even  the  Burnses  and  Tannahiils  that  repre- 
sent the  Scottish  peasants  and  artisans  of  Episcopacy? 
The  national  type  is  decidedly  Presbyterian  in  its  intelli- 
gence, and  still  more  decidedly  so  in  its  worth  and  its 
religion ;  and  if  we  but  strike  off  the  Presbyterian  cate- 
chumens and  communicants  of  the  country  from  the  general 
mass,  —  the  men  either  in  full  communion  with  the  Church 
or  her  auxiliaries,  or  in  the  course  of  preparation  for  such 
a  union,  —  we  leave  behind  merely  a  caput  mortuum  of 


AKD   THE   PRESBYTERIAN   CHURCH.  249 

inert  ignorance  and  superstition,  or  of  fierce  and  reckless, 
and,  in  most  instances,  quite  as  ignorant  infidelity.  The 
class  to  which  the  Church  is  at  present  struggling  to  extend 
those  privileges  which  so  many  of  her  saints  and  martyrs 
contended  to  secure  to  them,  includes,  in  at  least  the  pro- 
portion of  nineteen  twentieths,  the  w^orth,  the  religion,  and 
the  intelligence  of  the  country. 

On  an  estimate  such  as  this  have  the  non-intrusionists  of 
the  Church  founded  the  measure  for  the  integrity  of  which 
they  are  now  called  to  suffer  and  resist.  Were  the  estimate 
different,  the  measure  would  also  be  different.  Cases  may 
easily  be  imagined  in  which  the  popular  voice  would  be  a 
very  improper  element  in  the  choice  or  rejection  of  a 
Christian  minister.  An  entire  people  may  sink  into  infi- 
delity, as  was  the  case  with  the  French  people  during  the 
first  Revolution ;  or  they  may  lie  sunk  in  a  state  of  gross 
and  savage  paganism,  as  is  the  case  at  present  with  the 
great  bulk  of  the  inhabitants  of  New  Zealand.  Consult 
the  choice  of  the  one  class  —  the  more  civilized  one  — 
regarding  religion  or  its  teachers,  and  they  trick  out  for 
themselves  a  painted  prostitute  in  the  spangled  gauds  of 
the  opera-house,  and,  after  dignifying  her  with  the  name 
of  the  Goddess  of  Reason,  they  prostrate  themselves  before 
her  in  simulated  worship ;  or,  more  fantastic  and  more 
horrid  still,  they  exhume  the  mouldering  remains  of  the 
perished  apostles  of  infidelity,  and  burn  incense  before  the 
insensate  and  ghastly  skulls.  Consult  the  choice  of  the 
other  class,  and  they  seek  out  for  themselves  their  native 
priests  to  assist  them  in  their  human  sacrifices.  In  both 
these  instances  Christianity  is  compelled  to  act  on  a  differ- 
ent principle,  —  the  principle  on  which  the  apostles  acted, 
—  not  within  the  Church,  but  in  their  efforts  to  extend  the 
Church.  The  missionary  principle  is  the  only  one  which 
applies  to  the  exigencies  of  such  cases,  and  the  people  are 
not  asked  to  clioose  their  teachers,  but  entreated  to  listen 
to  the  teachers  which  have  been  sent  to  them.  It  is  only 
when  a  Christian  body  have  been  formed  into  a  Church,  as 


250  THE    SCOTCH   PEOPLE,   ETC. 

was  the  case  when  Knox  drew  up  his  First  Book  of  Dis- 
cipline, that  the  principle  now  contended  for  can  come 
into  operation ;  and  it  is  in  the  well-founded  belief  that 
our  parochial  communicants  form  such  a  body,  —  that  all 
of  them  are  members  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  —  that 
very  many  of  them  are  members  of  the  Church  of  Christ, 

—  that  they  have  a  deeper  stake  in  the  appointment  of 
their  ministers  than  ministers  themselves  can  possibly 
jDOSsess  in  their  collective  character,  —  that  it  is  a  duty 
demanded  of  them  individually  to  "try  the  spirits,  whether 
they  be  of  God,"  —  that  to  this  solemn  injunction  they  are 
qualified  to  conform  by  Him  who  has  laid  it  upon  them ; 

—  it  is,  we  assert,  in  this  belief  that  our  Church  courts  are 
now  struggling  to  secure  to  the  Christian  people  a  direct- 
ing voice  in  the  appointment  of  their  pastors.  If  they  but 
believed,  on  the  contrary,  that  these  very  people  were  "  a 
brute  insensate  herd,"  an  "irresponsible,  unreasonable" 
mob,  they  would  never  once  think  of  introducing  among 
them  such  a  principle.  They  contend  for  their  privileges, 
as  those  of  a  Christian  2:)eople  in  full  communion  with  a 
Christian  Church. 

To  the  great  bulk  of  our  readers  all  this  will  seem  suffi- 
ciently plain  and  obvious.  They  have  all  heard,  and  many 
of  them  have  known  from  experience,  of  the  general  intel- 
ligence of  the  Presbyterian  people  of  Scotland.  Rarely 
do  very  superior  men  rise  from  among  very  ignorant  masses. 
It  was  a  Scotch  ploughman  that  described  the  "  Cottar's 
Saturday  Night ; "  it  was  a  Scotch  shepherd  that  produced 
the  "Queen's  Wake;"  it  was  a  Scotch  stone-cutter  that 
wrote  the  "  Lives  of  the  British  Painters,  Sculptors,  and 
Architects ; "  it  was  a  Scotch  weaver  that  bequeathed  to 
America  its  "Ornithology;"  it  was  a  Scotch  mechanician 
who  invented  the  steam-engine ;  it  was  a  Scotch  herd-boy 
who  first  explored  the  hitherto  misunderstood  phenomena 
of  the  phases  of  the  moon ;  it  was  a  Scotch  mason  who 
planned  the  great  Caledonian  Canal,  and  threw  the  bridge 
over  the  Menai.     Kow,  from  no  "brute  herd"  could  such 


251 

men  have  arisen.  The  classes  that  look  down  upon  the 
people  as  irrational  have  not  yet  produced  better  samples. 
Our  readers  are  also  aware  of  the  religious  character  of 
our  better  Presbyterian  people.  They  are  aware,  too,  that 
though  Milton  rightly  describes  hypocrisy  as  the  "vice 
which  walks  unseen,"  it  is  not  the  less  true  that  there  is  a 
religious  sympathy  which  draws  the  good  together,  and 
tlirough  whose  revulsions  and  antipathies  unconverted  and 
secular-minded  men  are  very  soon  discovered  to  be  such. 
They  are  aware,  in  short,  that  pious  laymen  are  as  thor- 
oughly qualified  to  choose  out  for  themselves  pious,  reli- 
gious teachers,  or  to  detect  those  who  are  not  so,  as  the 
general  imperfection  and  infirmity  of  judgment  which 
cling  to  our  fallen  nature,  and  which  insinuate  their  mix- 
ture of  error  into  all  human  affairs,  allow  us  to  predicate 
of  qualification  in  any  case. 


MODERATISM    POPULAR,   WHERE    AND   WHY. 

There  is  a  smart  paragraph  taking  the  round  of  our 
Scotch  newspapers,  descriptive  of  a  recent  settlement  in  a 
northern  parish.  A  vacancy  occurred,  through  the  death 
of  the  incumbent,  and  the  parishioners  were  presented  by 
the  patron  with  a  leet  of  four,  two  of  whom  were  Modei-- 
ates,  and  two  of  the  opposite  party.  Means,  it  is  stated, 
were  taken  by  some  of  the  friends  of  the  latter  to  influence 
their  choice.  The  Moderates  were  men  of  a  genial  tem- 
perament, and  the  people  were  told  so.  One  of  them,  it 
was  urged,  was  fond  of  fiddling.  "He  will  be  the  more 
useful  at  weddings,"  said  the  people.  Nor  has  he  any 
abhorrence,  it  was  added,  of  whisky  punch.  "Xor  we 
either,"  said  the  people;  "we  will  go  all  the  oftener  to  see 
him."  In  short,  Moderatism  triumphed  on  the  principle 
alluded  to  by  the  poet,  that  "laymen  have  leave  to  dance 
if  parsons  play."     The  "fiddling  priest"  was  preferred  by 


252 

a  sweeping  majority;  and  the  fact  is  adduced  by  our  con- 
temporaries, either  to  show  that  Evangelism  is  struggling 
to  emancipate  the  people  to  its  own  hurt,  or  that,  in  some 
cases  at  least,  parishes  choose  well.  We  take  the  story  as 
we  find  it,  with  certainly  no  proof  that  it  is  true,  but  as 
certainly  with  no  suspicion  that  it  is  false;  for  we  have 
seen  quite  enough  of  Scotland  and  its  people  to  know  that 
there  are  tracts  of  country  in  which  incidents  of  the  same 
nature  might  readily  enough  occur.  We  are  acquainted 
with  at  least  one  district  in  the  far  north  in  which  it  had 
become  a  popular  saying,  at  a,  time  when  smuggling  was 
more  common  than  it  is  at  present,  "  Give  us  but  a  good- 
natured  exciseman,  and  it  matters  little  whether  you  give 
us  a  minister  or  no." 

One  of  the  great  evils  of  Moderatism  is  its  tendency  to 
extirpate  religion  altogether.  It  is  no  doubt  a  bad  state 
of  matters  when  dissent  is  rendered  inevitable  in  a  religious 
parish  by  the  tyranny  of  a  forced  settlement ;  and  it  is 
surely  grievous  to  see  the  better  people  of  the  Church 
forced  reluctantly,  by  congregations  at  a  time,  beyond  her 
pale.  But  there  may  be  a  much  worse  state  of  matters 
than  this.  It  is  better  that  there  should  be  religion  in  a 
l^arish,  however  harshly  or  cruelly  it  may  be  dealt  with,  thari 
that  there  should  be  none;  and  there  are  parishes  in  Scot- 
land, though  the  number  fortunately  is  not  great,  where, 
through  the  indifference  and  the  irreligion  of  the  people, 
there  can  be  no  forced  settlements  and  no  dissent.  We 
resided  for  some  time  in  a  parish  of  this  character  about 
sixteen  years  ago.  It  lies  to  the  south  of  Edinburgh;  and 
tlie  parishioners,  who  were  numerous  at  the  time,  were 
divided,  by  the  accumulation  of  capital  in  the  hands  of  a 
few,  and  the  prevalence  of  the  large  farm  system,  into  two 
extreme  classes,  —  a  class  on  the  low  level  of  the  common 
laborer,  which  constituted  the  great  bulk  of  the  population, 
and  a  class,  comprising  some  thirty  or  forty  individuals 
and  their  families,  who  occupied  a  place  in  society  rather 
higher    than    the    middle    one.      Moderatism    had    been 


MODERATISM   POPULAR,  WHERE   AND    WHY.  253 

entrenched  in  the  parish  pulpit  for  well-nigh  a  century, 
and  Moderatism  in  its  most  respectable  form.  It  had 
neither  lived  grossly  nor  taught  heresy.  It  had  done  no 
mischief;  it  had  done  merely  nothing ;  and,  instead  of 
perverting,  it  had  only  suppressed  the  truth.  The  incum- 
bent, at  the  period  to  which  we  refer,  was  an  indolent, 
elderly,  respectable  man,  rather  dull  than  otherwise,  who, 
having  labored  in  his  youth,  had  a  sermon  for  every  Sab- 
bath in  the  year,  and  a  few  additional,  and  who  very  prop- 
erly asserted  in  them  all,  and  challenged  scrutiny,  that  it 
was  well  to  be  virtuous,  and  not  so  well  to  be  vicious,  and 
that  fanaticism  was  a  sore  evil.  The  upper  class  deemed 
him  a  sensible  man,  and  heard  his  one  sermon  once  a  week ; 
the  lower  had  ceased  attending  church  altogether ;  and  in 
scarce  any  other  district  of  Scotland  have  we  found  a  less 
intelligent  or  a  more  irreligious  people.  The  respectable 
among  them  —  for  there  are  differences  among  all  classes 
—  passed  the  greater  half  of  the  Sabbath  in  their  beds, 
rose  to  dinner,  and,  if  the  evening  was  fine,  went  saunter- 
ing about  the  fields;  with  the  less  respectable.  Sabbath 
was  a' day  of  drunkenness  and  dissipation.  It  was  impos- 
sible that  a  forced  settlement  could  have  taken  place  in 
the  parish:  there  was  not  religion  enough  in  it  to  suggest 
objections  or  nourish  dissent.  The  people  would  have 
well-nigh  as  soon  thought  of  challenging  the  right  of  one 
of  their  proprietors  to  his  lands  as  the  right  of  a  presentee 
to  his  glebe  and  stipend ;  and  had  their  choice  been  con- 
sulted in  his  nomination,  a  turn  for  fiddling  and  good  fel- 
lowship would  have  been  powerful  recommendations.  It 
affords  us  much  pleasure  to  add,  that  a  different  state  of 
matters  is  beginning  to  obtain  in  this  forlorn  parish  from 
what  obtained  in  it  sixteen  years  ago.  There  is  less  immo- 
rality and  less  ignorance  and  apathy,  and  the  poor  people 
have  learned  to  rise  earlier  on  Sabbath,  and  to  attend 
church.  The  old  and  highly  respectable  Moderate,  after 
drawling  through  his  last  discourse,  was  succeeded  by  a 
clergyman  who  preaches  Jesus  Christ  and  him  crucified ; 

22 


254  MODERATISM   POPULAR,  WHERE   AND    WHY. 

and  the  class  to  whom  the  gospel  was  preached  of  old  have 
gone  to  hear  him.  There  could  be  such  a  thing  as  a  forced 
settlement  in  the  jDarish  now,  and  a  Secession  chapel  as  a 
consequence. 

The  apathy  and  indifference  to  religion  which  obtain  in 
only  a  few  districts  in  Scotland  are  very  extensively  spread 
over  the  sister  kingdom,  and  dissent,  in  consequence,  does 
not  very  often  originate  in  the  Church  from  what  we  may 
term  an  internal  principle.  The  hereditary  Dissenter,  fixed 
in  one  locality,  withdraws  occasionally  a  few  individuals 
from  out  the  inert  mass,  or,  as  in  the  days  of  Whitefield 
and  Wesley,  the  itinerating  Dissenter  succeeds  in  founding, 
though  rarely,  a  meeting-house  among  them  on  the  mission- 
ary j^rinciple.  We  have  been  informed,  however,  by  a 
person  intimately  acquainted  with  the  subject,  that  the 
main,  though,  as  we  have  said,  a  not  very  active  cause  of 
dissent  in  England  (for  there  are  at  present  no  very  active 
causes  in  operation)  originates  within,  not  without,  the 
pale  of  the  Church,  and  in  exactly  the  same  way  in  which, 
as  we  have  shown,  it  sometimes  originates  in  Scotland. 
An  evangelical  Churchmap  of  the  Scott  or  Newton  stamp 
is  appointed  to  a  charge  ;  the  inert  masses  are  aroused  by 
those  powerfully  impressive  doctrines  of  the  gospel,  fitted 
by  Deity  himself  to  agitate  and  awaken,  and  which,  through 
the  accompanying  influence  of  the  Spirit,  render  men  wise 
unto  salvation ;  a  church-going  and  religious  people  are 
trained  up  under  his  ministry;  and,  after  performing  his 
work  of  usefulness,  he  is  summoned  to  his  reward,  and 
passes  away.  A  stranger  succeeds  him,  whose  voice  the 
sheep  do  not  know,  and  whom  therefore  they  will  not  fol- 
low, —  perhaps,  according  to  Cowper,  "  a  cassocked  hunts- 
man and  a  fiddling  priest,"  —  at  least  a  person  who,  like 
our  old  pastor  in  the  southern  parish,  neither  knows  the 
gospel  nor  cares  for  it,  and  who  tells  his  poor  hearers  that 
it  is  good  to  be  good,  and  bad  to  be  bad,  and  wise  to 
eschew  fanaticism.  Dissent  is  the  inevitable  consequence 
of  such  an  appointment  in  such  a  parish ;  but  who  does 


MODERATISM   POPULAR,  WHERE   AND    WHY.  255 

not  see  that  the  cause  is  a  mixed  one,  and  that  the  Evan- 
gelism of  the  one  preacher  has  as  certainly  led  to  it  as  the 
Moderatism  of  the  other  ?  Puseyism  contends  for  what 
it  terms  the  apostolic  succession  ;  and,  as  the  question  is 
mixed  up  with  religion,  men  of  sense  try  to  avoid  smiling 
at  its  amazing  absurdity,  except  when  they  are  not  seen. 
But  there  is  a  real  apostolic  succession  to  which  it  is  well 
to  attend,  and  the  neglect  of  which  is  injurious  to  the 
Church  of  England  now,  and  has  inflicted  incalculable 
injury  on  the  Church  of  Scotland  in  the  past.  The  true 
apostolic  succession  was  kept  up  when  Thomas  Scott  suc- 
ceeded John  Newton ;  but  it  would  have  been  woefully 
broken  had  he  been  succeeded  by  the  Rev.  Titus  Oates  or 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Dodd.  Nor  would  the  imposition  of  the  Bish- 
op's hands  have  mended  the  matter  in  the  least.  Is  our 
own  Church  in  no  danger  of  breaking  the  apostolic  suc- 
cession in  a  certain  district,  should  the  ministrations  of  the 
Commission's  ministers  come  to  be  superseded  there?  The 
people  two  years  ago  might  have  chosen  a  minister  for  his 
skill  in  fiddling ;  but  they  would  choose  and  reject  on  very 
difierent  principles  now. 

There  is  a  sufficiently  obvious  inference  which  we  draw 
from  the  fact  furnished  us  by  our  contemporaries.  The  best 
argument  against  slavery  is  deduced  from  the  degradation 
of  character  which  slavery  induces.  It  brutalizes  those 
whom  it  oppresses,  and  renders  them  unfit  for  liberty  ;  but, 
so  far  from  seeking  for  its  apology  in  the  abuses  of  slavery, 
and  so  far  from  arguing  that  it  should  be  tolerated  or  main- 
tained because  it  is  so  execrable  as  to  affect  not  only  the 
physical,  but  also  the  mental  condition  of  men,  we  contend 
that  it  is  those  very  abuses,  and  those  most  mischievous 
effects,  which  render  it  so  intolerable.  Did  it  affect  only 
the  bodies  of  the  unfortunates  subjected  to  it,  the  aboli- 
tionist would  be  less  the  benefactor  of  his  species,  and 
more  on  a  level  with  the  class  whose  benevolent  exertions 
are  restricted  to  the  prevention  of  mere  animal  suffering. 
Now,  it  is  with  Moderatism  as  with  slavery.    The  one  first 


256  THE   EARL   OF   ABERDEEN 

treats  men  as  if  they  were  unfit  for  liberty,  and  then 
renders  them  in  reality  unfit  for  it;  the  other  first  treats 
them  as  if  they  were  unfit  to  exercise  any  influence  in  the 
appointment  of  their  spiritual  teachers,  and  then  renders 
them  unfit  for  it,  by  weaning  out  the  religious  feeling  from 
among  them,  and  the  knowledge  of  religious  truth.  But 
where,  in  either  case,  does  the  remedy  lie  ?  In  destroying 
the  power  of  the  slaveholder,  and  emancipating  the  slave ; 
in  removing  the  prop  on  which  Moderatism  has  leant,  and 
without  which  it  must  ultimately  fall.  In  the  one  case  we 
emancipate  a  slave  unfit  for  freedom.  Yes,  but  he  will 
never  be  fitted  for  it  in  slavery.  Set  him  free,  and,  as  hap- 
pened to  the  king  of  Babylon  of  old,  the  beast's  heart  will 
leave  him,  and  the  heart  of  the  man  return.  In  the  other 
case  we  extend  a  privilege  to  j^eople,  some  of  whom  are 
unfitted  to  exercise  it  aright.  True ;  we  are  reminded  of 
that  by  the  very  men  who  rendered  them  unfit.  But  the 
privilege  is  in  very  bad  hands  already.  An  unrestricted 
patronage  gives  ten  ineflScient  Moderates  to  the  Church,  to 
darken  the  popular  mind  and  paralyze  the  popular  judg- 
ment, for  every  one  that  the  people  will  give  to  it ;  and, 
though  a  few  mistakes  will  be  made  in  those  hapless  par- 
ishes in  which  Moderatism  has  been  longest  encamped,  the 
truth  will  be  gradually  spreading  around  them ;  nor  is  it 
likely  that  they  can  long  continue  to  reverse  the  miracle 
in  Goshen,  by  remaining  insulated  districts  of  darkness 
walled  by  light. 


THE  EAKL  OF  ABERDEEN  versus  THE  PEOPLE  OF 
SCOTLAND. 

The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  has  determined  to  press  the 
second  reading  of  his  bill.  The  Church  of  Scotland  has 
had  many  enemies  to  contend  with,  —  the  priest,  the  pre- 
late, and   the    dragoon ;    Moderatism,  Voluntaryism,    the 


AND  THE  PEOPLE  OF  SCOTLAND.         257 

Court  of  Session,  and  the  author  of  an  unreadable  pam- 
plilet.  Arid  yet  it  is  the  Church  of  Scotland  still.  We 
trust  it  is  also  destined  to  survive  his  lordship's  measure. 
The  reader  has  heard  of  an  eagle  "struck  at  and  killed" 
by  a  "mousing  owl,"  but  such  prodigies  do  not  happen 
every  day;  and  we  can  hope  that  that  Church  of  Christ, 
and  the  people,  which  outlived  a  century  and  a  half  of 
fierce  persecution  and  the  bitter  hostility  of  five  succeed- 
ing monarchs, — two  of  them  at  least  skilful  in  playing 
on  double  meanings,  and  one  of  them  remarkable  for 
making  long  speeches  and  unreadable  books,  —  may  also 
outlive  the  assaults  of  a  diplomatist  skilful  in  concealing 
his  intentions  by  carefully  selecting  his  words,  and  of  a 
special  pleader,  always  more  successful  in  making  his 
addresses  long  than  his  meaning  plain.  It  will  be  foul 
shame  and  dishonor  to  the  people  of  Scotland  if  they 
suffer  the  Church  of  their  fathers  to  sink  beneath  men  of  a 
lower  grade  than  even  the  subsidiary  tools  of  the  enemies 
and  j)ersecutors  who  arrayed  themselves  against  her  of 
old.  Our  ancestors  would  have  little  recked  the  enmity 
of  Rothes  and  Mackenzie,  had  not  the  craft  of  the  one  and 
the  sophistry  of  the  other  been  backed  by  the  malignant 
despotism  of  Charles. 

It  were  well  that  the  Presbyterian  people  of  Scotland 
should  consider  how  deeply  their  interests  are  involved  in 
the  present  struggle.  We  address  ourselves  to  them  as 
one  of  themselves,  —  simply  as  one  of  the  humbler  people, 
come  out  a  single  step  in  advance  in  this  quarrel  to  speak 
for  the  rest.  We  say,  therefore,  both  for  them  and  our- 
selves, that  we  have  no  other  stake  of  equal  importance 
and  value  with  our  stake  in  the  Church.  Toryism  in  its 
first  elements,  and  regarded  simply  as  feeling,  does  not, 
and  cannot,  constitute  the  politics  of  the  common  people; 
there  are,  alas!  few  among  them  easy  enough  in  their 
present  position  and  circumstances  to  have  no  desire  of 
change  ;  and  what  can  be  more  natural  than  that  men 
in  the  lower  walks  of  society  should  solace  themselves, 

22* 


258  THE   EARL   OF   ABERDEEN 

amid  obscurity  and  toil,  with  the  well-grounded  beiref 
—  a  belief  sanctioned  alike  by  reason  and  revelation  — 
that  they  are  in  no  degree  an  inferior  race  of  creatures  to 
the  men  set  in  authority  above  them;  that  their  minds, 
in  many  instances,  are  of  no  lower  order,  and  that  most 
certainly  their  immortal  souls  are  of  no  lower  value?  And 
hence  a  natural  Whiggism,  which  must  ever  exist  in  the 
lower  levels,  whether  the  name  exists  or  no.  We  are  not 
political  in  making  the  remark;  we  speak  with  no  refer- 
ence to  party ;  we  state  merely  a  fact.  In  this  Avhiggish 
feeling  the  politics  of  the  people  have  their  origin.  The 
laboring  man  snatches  at  every  semblance  of  reform,  for 
reform  promises  to  better  his  condition.  But  the  experi- 
ence of  eight  years  has  shown  how  little  mere  statesman- 
ship can  do  for  the  masses.  The  men  who  labored  twelve 
hours  per  day  before  the  Reform  Bill  passed,  labor  twelve 
hours  still ;  taxation  does  not  press  less  heavily  on  the 
poor  now  than  it  did  then  ;  nor  are  the  sufferings  of  the 
country  less,  nor  has  its  crime  diminished.  Goldsmith  was 
quite  in  the  right  when  he  asserted  that  little  of  the  misery 
endured  by  mankind  can  be  cured  by  either  kings  or  laws. 
We  would  be  unworthy  of  freedom  were  we  to  assert  that 
there  is  no  difference  between  the  slave  and  the  freeman, 
however  sunk  in  poverty  the  freeman  may  be.  There  is  a 
wide  difference.  The  freeman  may,  and  he  often  does,  toil 
harder,  and  he  may,  and  he  often  does,  endure  more.  We 
ourselv^es  have  toiled  as  hard  as  any  slave  in  the  colonies, 
and  for  well-nigh  as  little  —  food  and  raiment.  But  in 
the  midst  of  toil  and  of  poverty  the  mind  of  the  freeman 
grows,  the  intellect  ripens,  and  the  sentiments  expand  ; 
whereas  the  mind  of  the  slave  shrivels  and  decays.  It  is 
chiefly  with  reference  to  the  better  part  of  man  that  the 
poor  mechanics  and  laborers  of  Scotland  are  more  advan- 
tageously circumstanced  in  the  j^resent  day  than  the  vas- 
sals of  Poland  or  the  serfs  of  Russia.  In  addressing 
ourselves  to  this  class  —  the  "men  of  handicraft  and  hard 
labor"  —  we  say  it  is  incomparably  of  more  advantage  that 


AXD    THE   PEOPLE   OF    SCOTLAND.  259 

yoii  should  have  a  voice  in  the  nomination  of  your  parisli 
minister,  than  of  the  men  who  represent  in  Parliament  the 
districts  to  which  you  belong.  Members  of  Parliament 
can  do  very  little  for  you,  and  you  are  now  beginning  to 
discover  that  such  is  the  case.  Ministers,  if  truly  men  of 
God,  can  do  a  great  deal.  We  speak  to  the  experience  of 
such  of  our  humbler  countrymen  as  believe  in  sincerity  the 
truths  which  the  Scriptures  reveal.  We  say,  freedom  is 
valuable  to  you,  not  because  you  fare  better  in  consequence 
of  freedom,  nor  yet  because  you  toil  less :  such  is  not  the 
fact;  —  you  do  not  fare  better,  —  you  do  not  toilless:  it 
is  valuable  to  you  from  the  independence  of  mind  which 
it  cherishes.  Slavery  has  meannesses  and  vices  inseparable 
from  it,  from  which  you  are  exempted ;  and  your  circum- 
stances, though  narrow,  need  be  accompanied  by  none  of 
that  narrowness  of  intellect  almost  associated  with  slavery. 
And  if  such  be  the  case, — if  your  advantages  be  chiefly 
advantages  of  mind,  —  shall  we  deem  lightly  of  what 
relates  to  the  better  portion  of  the  mind,  and  which 
involves  its  concerns  for  eternity  ?  You  are  not  creatures 
of  this  world  only.  The  God  who,  in  his  great  munificence, 
bestowed  upon  you  immortal  souls,  has  revealed  unto  you 
their  priceless  value,  and  the  only  way,  through  the  blood 
of  a  Redeemer,  in  which  your  salvation  can  be  secured. 
And  one  of  the  €hief  means  which  he  has  appointed  for 
bringing  you  into  that  only  way  is  the  preaching  of  his 
word.  Of  how  much  importance  is  it,  then,  that  the 
word  be  faithfully  preached  to  you  ! 

Now,  under  the  influence  of  the  system  espoused  by  the 
Earl  of  Aberdeen,  and  which  his  measure  has  been  framed 
to  reestablish,  the  people  need  not  expect  that  the  gospel 
will  be  faithfully  preached  to  them.  They  have  but  to 
remember  the  past,  in  order  to  enable  them  to  judge,  in 
this  respect,  of  the  future.  They  have  but  to  look  at  the 
class  of  clergymen  by  whom  his  lordship's  measure  is  so 
zealously  advocated,  in  order  to  conceive  what  sort  of  a 
Church  the  body  would  form  of  themselves.     The  ultimate 


260  THE    EARL    OF   ABERDEEN 

fate  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  bill  will  decide  whether 
the  patrimony  of  the  Church  is  in  reality  to  constitute,  as 
was  originally  intended,  the  patrimony  of  the  people,  or 
whether,  for  somewhat  less  than  half  a  generation,  and  ere 
it  be  thrown  into  the  general  fund,  it  is  to  be  appropriated 
to  the  support  of  a  corporation  of  time-serving  clergymen, 
—  a  class  of  public  stipendiaries  of  all  others  the  most 
useless,  and  which  the  dictates  of  a  wise  economy  would 
select  first  for  suppression,  in  a  course  of  financial  reform. 
In  what  degree  would  Scotland  be  the  better  of  a  thousand 
empty  churches,  in  which  men  ignorant  of  the  gospel 
would,  with  tlieir  lifeless  ministrations,  desecrate  the  Sab- 
bath for  hire?  It  is  impossible,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
that  the  ministers  of  any  religious  establishment  can  be 
merely  a  harmless  race.  They  must  rank  among  either  the 
benefactors  or  the  enemies  of  a  country;  they  must  be 
as  blessings  or  as  curses  to  it.  Our  Saviour  himself  has 
declared  that  there  can  be  no  neutrality  where  religion  is 
concerned,  and  that  those  who  are  not  for  him  are  against 
him.  Nor  need  we  appeal  to  history  to  show  that  the 
mere  priest  —  the  mere  creature  of  patronage,  the  mere 
tool  of  power  —  has  been  ever  an  enemy  of  the  general 
welfare  and  of  popular  improvement.  The  Church  of 
Scotland  must  be  either  a  great  benefit  or  a  great  evil  to 
the  people ;  it  must  be  —  what  Knox  and  the  first  fathers 
of  the  Reformation  intended  —  a  dispenser  of  benefits, 
moral  and  intellectual,  —  a  nurse  of  knowledge,  of  virtue, 
and  religion ;  or  it  must  bear  as  a  nightmare  on  the  ener- 
gies of  the  country,  until  at  length  the  popular  indignation 
gather  strength  and  shake  it  off.  It  is  well  that  the  people 
of  Scotland  should  know  that  these  alternatives  are  in- 
volved in  the  adoption  or  rejection  of  the  Earl  of  Aber- 
deen's bilL  The  future  history  of  the  Church  cannot 
resemble  its  history  in  the  past  century.  It  must  inevitably 
either  sink  into  a  lower  depth  of  inefficiency,  or  rise  into  a 
more  general  and  extended  usefulness  j  and  it  is  well  that 


AND  THE  PEOPLE  OF  SCOTLAND.         261 

the  people  of  Scotland  should  consider  how  necessary  a 
result  this  must  prove  of  the  fate  of  his  lordship's  bill. 

In  the  last  century  the  two  antagonist  parties  of  the 
Church  were  spread  over  her  parishes  like  the  wheat  and 
the  tares  in  the  one  field.  An  inefficient  and  time-serving 
clergy  were  in  many  instances  the  near  neiglibors  of  min- 
isters conscientiously  faithful  and  eminently  useful.  The 
policy  of  our  ecclesiastical  courts  was  unequivocally  bad, 
because  our  majorities  were  so;  but  in  many  a  parish  and 
in  many  a  district  were  the  true  objects  of  the  Church 
accomplished,  and  the  true  interests  of  the  people  pursued, 
through  the  influence  of  a  devout  and  diligent  minority. 
But  there  are  two  causes  which  must  effectually  operate  in 
preventing  any  return  to  such  a  state  of  things  in  the 
future.  The  old  Presbyterian  party  in  the  Church  have 
taught  the  patrons  and  the  patronage-assertors  of  Scotland 
—  men  such  as  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  —  a  lesson  which 
they  will  not  soon  forget.  They  have  taught  them  that  so 
essentially  popular  is  Presbyterianism  in  its  original  integ- 
rity, that  it  is  impossible  for  it  to  acquire  power  without 
directly  militating  against  the  abus^  of  unrestricted  pat- 
ronage ;  and  their  influence,  therefore,  will  be  exercised  in 
carefully  excluding  it.  What  more  natural  than  that  for 
the  future  the  patron  should  present  to  the  people's  hurt, — 
not  to  his  own?  or  that  he  should  introduce  exclusively 
into  the  Church  members  of  the  party  whose  very  exist- 
ence is  bound  up  in  patronage,  and  who,  with  the  instinct 
of  self-preservation,  would  compass  sea  and  land  to  preserve 
it  in  its  unbroken  malignity  ?  But  the  second  cause  craves 
more  serious  thought,  as  it  regards  a  more  urgent  danger. 
What  is  to  become  of  our  present  majority  ?  England 
saw  two  thousand  of  her  Presbyterian  clergy  ejected  from 
their  livings  and  their  churches  in  one  day,  and  there  were 
several  hundreds  of  surely  our  best  ministers  ousted  about 
the  same  time  from  the  parishes  of  Scotland.  Are  our 
countrymen  of  the  present  age  prepared  for  witnessing  a 
similar  exercise  of  power  on  the  part  of  either  the  Court 


262 

of  Session  or  the  House  of  Lords?  Are  they  prepared  to 
give  up  the  men  whose  sole  crime  it  is  that  they  have  stood 
up  to  assert  in  the  people's  behalf,  agreeably  to  our  original 
standards,  that  no  minister  be  "obtruded  into  any  church 
contrary  to  the  will  of  the  congregation "  ?  Are  they 
prepared  to  give  up  the  Church  itself?  For  what  is  the 
Church,  apart  from  its  better  ministers,  but  a  piece  of  dead 
framework  of  importance  to  the  hirelings  who  derive  from 
it  a  provision  for  themselves  and  their  families,  but  of  no 
value  whatever  to  the  people  ?  Or  do  they  think  that  our 
more  devout  and  more  excellent  clergymen,  in  the  face  of 
their  solemn  professions,  will  learn  to  accommodate  their 
consciences  to  the  provisions  of  Lord  Aberdeen's  bill,  and 
proceed  forthwith,  in  union  with  the  Dr.  Cooks  and  Dr. 
Bryces  of  the  Church,  to  force  the  Youngs  and  Edwardses 
of  Auchterarder  and  Marnoch  on  the  reclaiming  people  ? 
Assuredly  the  poor  man's  main  stake  is  involved  in  this 
quarrel.  It  would  be  the  duty  and  the  interest  of  the 
people  of  Scotland  heartily  to  oppose  his  lordship  did  he 
merely  set  himself  to  rescind  the  Reform  Bill.  It  has  not 
done  much  for  the  poorer  people.  Legislation  can  neither 
lighten  their  toils,  nor  make  them  happier  under  them ; 
but  at  least  some  of  the  moral  effects  of  the  bill  have  been 
good.  It  has  brought  public  opinion  to  bear  against  many 
abuses.  It  brought  it  to  bear  on  the  abolition  of  the  slave- 
trade,  and  led  to  a  great  act  of  national  justice  in  the  final 
emancipation  of  the  slave.  But  were  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen 
to  blot  the  Reform  Bill  out  of  the  statute-book,  he  would 
inflict  but  a  slight  and  trivial  injury  on  the  people  of 
Scotland,  compared  with  the  injury  which  he  now  con- 
templates. 

That  people  possess  a  power  in  the  present  day  which 
they  did  not  possess  in  the  days  of  Sir  George  Mackenzie, 
nor  yet  in  the  days  of  Bolingbroke.  We  are  told  that, 
shortly  after  the  Union,  the  Scotch  representatives  found 
themselves  entirely  lost  among  the  Commons  of  England, 
who   opposed    them  in   every   national    question,  in   the 


DEBATE  IN  THE  EDINBURGH  PRESBYTERY,  ETC.   263 

proportion  of  nearly  ten  to  one.  But  they  soon  discovered 
a  remedy.  The  English  were  divided  into  two  great  and 
nearly  equally  balanced  parties  ;  and  though  the  forty-five 
Scots  formed  a  very  poor  minority  of  themselves,  they 
found  that  whatever  side  they  chose  to  range  themselves 
upon  became  straightway  the  majority.  They  discovered 
that  they  could  adjust  the  scales,  though  they  could  not 
outweigh  even  the  lightest  of  them;  and  they  became 
influential  in  consequence.  Parties  in  the  present  day  are 
more  equally  balanced  than  they  were  in  the  days  of  Queen 
Anne ;  and  it  were  well  for  Scotchmen  to  consider  whether 
it  be  not  their  duty  to  give  that  prominence  to  the  interests 
of  their  country  now  which  their  ancestors  did  a  hundred 
and  twenty  years  ago.  Questions  of  the  first  magnitude 
should  always  have  the  first  place  assigned  to  them ;  and 
it  is  of  immensely  more  importance  to  even  the  Conserva- 
tive Presbyterians  of  Scotland  that  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's 
measure  should  be  defeated,  than  that  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen 
should  form  the  member  of  a  new  cabinet.  Our  contem- 
porary the  Globe  has  a  pertinent  remark  on  the  subject : 
"We  have  not  a  particle  of  doubt,"  says  this  able  paper, 
"in  affirming  that  the  spiritual  independence  of  the  Scot- 
tish Church,  and  the  efficiency  of  the  will  of  the  Scottish 
people,  are  things  the  fate  of  which  politicians  have  not 
to  determine,  and  which  determine  the  fate  of  politicians." 


DEBATE    IN  THE    EDINBURGH  PRESBYTERY  ON    LORD 
ABERDEEN'S   BILL. 

Ix  die  debate  wlilch  Mr.  Miller  described  in  the  following  article, 
the  bill  by  which  Lord  Aberdeen  had  essayed  to  terminate  the 
agitation  in  the  Church  of  Scotland  fell  under  the  logic  and  sar- 
casm of  Dr.  Cunningham.  His  lordship  saw  fit  to  withdraw  his 
measure.  —  Ed. 


264  DEBATE   IN   THE   EDINBURGH   PRESBYTERY 

The  present  strngo;lG  threatens  to  be  a  protracted  one. 
But  there  is  no  lack  of  symptoms  on  the  part  of  both  the 
friends  and  the  opponents  of  the  popular  principle,  which 
indicate  the  final  result.  Our  readers  will  find  a  full  report 
in  our  columns  of  the  proceedings  of  the  Edinburgh  Pres- 
bytery at  its  meeting  of  Wednesday  last.  The  chief  busi- 
ness of  the  meeting  arose  out  of  the  present  position  of  tlie 
Clmrch  in  connection  with  the  attempt  of  the  Earl  of 
Aberdeen  to  convert  into  law  the  mischievous  absurdities 
of  the  Dean  of  Faculty  [Hope] ;  and  the  decision  arrived 
at  by  the  presbytery,  by  an  overpowering  majority,  and 
after  a  discussion  of  six  hours,  was  to  petition  Parliament 
against  his  lordship's  bill,  as  directly  subversive  of  the 
spiritual  independence  of  the  Church,  and  wholly  at  vari- 
ance with  the  genius  of  Presbytery.  No  report,  however 
literal,  can  convey  an  adequate  idea  of  a  debate  so  ani- 
mated and  interesting  as  that  which  took  place  on  this 
occasion.  There  is  a  vast  difference  between  a  series  of 
speeches  spread  over  a  few  closely-printed  columns,  and  a 
spirit-stirring  viva  voce  discussion  ;  but  our  report  must  be 
very  defective  indeed  if  it  does  not  convey  the  impression 
of  strength  contending  with  weakness,  and  show  that  there 
was  much  feebleness  and  much  timidity  on  the  one  side, 
and  much  courage  and  great  power  on  the  other.  The 
cause,  backed  by  the  decision  of  our  law  courts,  and  by  a 
considerable  portion  of  the  wealth  and  a  large  proportion 
of  the  aristocracy  of  the  country,  must  ultimately  go  down, 
for  there  is  no  heart  and  no  strength  in  it. 

We  fain  wish  we  could  give  our  readers  at  a  distance 
some  such  idea  of  the  late  meeting  of  presbytery  as  we 
ourselves  have  had  an  opportunity  of  forming.  The  Pres- 
bytery of  Edinburgh  is  the  most  ancient  in  the  kingdom. 
It  may  be  regarded  as  the  nucleus  of  the  Scottish  Church. 
According  to  Knox,  "before  that  there  was  any  public 
face  of  tlie  true  religion  in  this  realm,  it  had  pleased  God 
to  illuminate  the  hearts  of  many  private  persons,  who, 
straightway  quitting  the  idolatry  of  Papistry,  began  to 


ON  LORD  Aberdeen's  bill.  265 

assemble  themselves  together."  They  elected  out  of  their 
number  good  and  judicious  men,  such  as  "God  by  his 
grace"  had  best  qualified  for  their  elders  and  teachers;  and 
from  this  small  beginning,  principally  within  the  town  of 
Edinburgh,  arose  the  Presbyterian  Church  of  Scotland. 
There  is  nothing  to  mark  the  antiquity  of  the  presbytery  in 
the  hall  in  which  they  assemble.  It  is  a  modern  erection, 
lighted  from  above,  with  a  few  portraits  suspended  on  the 
walls,  and  a  bust  or  two  placed  on  brackets.  There  is  a 
gallery  for  strangers,  of  limits  all  too  scanty  on  occasions 
such  as  that  of  Wednesday  last,  and  the  members  occupy 
the  area  below.  From  a  front  seat,  which  we  were  fortu- 
nate enough  to  secure,  we  could  overlook  the  whole.  The 
parties,  instead  of  being  ranged  on  opposite  sides,  were 
mixed  up  together,  and  apparently  for  a  very  excellent 
reason  —  the  non-intrusionists  were  all  too  numerous,  and 
their  opponents  too  few.  The  original  Presbyterians  bid 
fair  to  fill  all  their  own  house,  as  at  first;  and  if  Mod- 
eratism  insists  on  retaining  its  own  side,  it  must  proceed 
forthwith,  as  in  the  days  of  Gillespie,  to  eject  and  expel. 

Some  of  the  better  known  names  in  the  presbytery  are 
borne  by  men  of  very  striking  appearance.  Dr.  Muir  is  an 
eminently  handsome  man  —  thin,  gentlemanly,  dignified, 
tastefully  dressed,  with  a  well-formed  head  of  moderate 
size,  such  as  a  phrenologist  would  expect  to  find  on  the 
shoulders  of  a  person  rather  of  fine  taste  than  of  compre- 
hensive genius.  We  would  have  deemed  him  quite  in  his 
proper  place  in  the  Upper  House  of  Parliament,  either  as 
a  lord  spiritual  or  lay.  Dr.  Gordon  is  also  a  strikingly 
handsome  man,  but  with  a  much  more  remarkable  develop- 
ment of  head.  It  is  a  head  of  the  Melancthon  type, — 
high,  erect,  with  an  overpowering  superstructure  of  senti- 
ment on  a  narrow  base  of  propensity,  and  a  forehead  rising, 
as  in  the  case  of  Shakspeare  and  Sir  Walter  Scott,  to  the 
top  of  the  coronal  region.  Combe,  in  one  of  his  phreno- 
logical works,  give  a  print  of  a  similar  head,  and  states 
that  among  the  heads  of  many  thousand  criminals  which 

23 


266     DEEATE  IN  THE  EDINBURGH  PRESBYTERY 

he  has  examined,  he  had  in  no  instance  found  a  resembling 
development.  If,  howevei",  tlie  Earl  of  Aberdeen  carry  his 
measure,  prisons  will  be  quite  the  place  to  find  them  in, 
and  the  phrenologist  will  require  to  modify  his  statement 
by  a  note.  Among  the  figures  of  the  younger  members  of 
the  court,  that  of  Mr.  Guthrie  is  one  of  the  most  striking. 
He  is  an  erect,  lathy,  muscular  man,  of  rather  more  than 
six  feet  two  inches,  who  would  evidently  not  liave  been 
idle  at  Drumclog,  and  who,  if  employed  at  all,  could  not 
be  employed  other  than  formidably.  Though  apparently 
under  forty,  the  hair  is  slightly  touched  with  gray,  and 
the  features,  though  beyond  comparison  more  handsome 
than  those  of  his  ancestor  the  martyr,  bear  decidedly 
a  similar  cast  and  expression.  The  appearance  and  figure 
of  Mr.  Cunningham  is  scarcely  less  striking  than  that 
of  his  friend  Mr.  Guthrie.  He  is  tall,  but  not  so  tall, 
though  rather  above  than  below  six  feet,  and  powerfully 
built.  His  liead  is  apparently  of  the  largest  size,  —  of 
the  nemo  one  impiine  lacessit  calibre ;  and  the  tempera- 
ment is  of  that  firm  bilious  cast  which  gives  to  size  its 
fullest  efiect. 

Mr.  Cunningham  commenced  the  debate  in  a  speech  of 
tremendous  power.  The  elements  were  various:  a  clear 
logic,  at  once  severely  nice  and  popular;  an  unhesitating 
readiness  of  language,  select  and  forcible,  and  well  fitted 
to  express  every  minuter  shade  of  meaning,  but  plain,  and. 
devoid  of  figure  ;  above  all,  an  extent  of  erudition,  and  an 
acquaintance  with  Church  history,  that,  in  every  instance 
in  which  the  argument  turned  on  a  matter  of  fact,  seemed 
to  render  opposition  hopeless.  But  what  gave  peculiar 
emphasis  to  the  wdiole  was  what  we  shall  venture  to  term 
the  propelling  power  of  the  mind, — that  animal  energy 
which  seems  to  act  the  part  of  the  moving  power  in  tlie 
mechanism  of  intellect,  —  which  gives  force  to  action  and 
depth  to  the  tones  of  the  voice,  and  impresses  the  hearer 
with  an  idea  of  immense  momentum.  There  were  parts 
of  Mr.  Cunningham's  speech  in  which  he  reminded  us  of 


ON  LORD  Aberdeen's  bill.  267 

Andrew  Melville  when  he  put  down  bishops  Barlow  and 
Bancraft,  and  sliook  the  lawn  sleeves  of  the  latter;  and 
we  could  not  help  wishing  that,  by  any  possibility,  circum- 
stances should  be  so  ordered  as  to  afford  him  an 'opportunity 
of  trying  conclusions  face  to  face  with  the  Earl  of  Aber- 
deen. His  powers  of  sarcasm  are  great,  and  of  a  peculiar 
character.  He  first  places  some  important  fact  or  argu- 
ment in  so  clear  a  light  that  there  remains  no  possibility 
of  arriving  at  more  than  one  conclusion  regarding  it.  He 
then  sets  in  close  juxtaposition  to  it  the  absurd  inference 
or  crooked  misstatement  of  an  antagonist,  and  bestows 
upon  his  ignorance  or  his  absurdity  the  plain  and  simple 
name.  White  is  always  white  with  Mr.  Cunningham,  and 
black  black,  and  he  finds  no  shade  of  gray  in  either.  His 
confidence  in  matter  of  fact,  based  on  an  extent  of  erudi- 
tion recognized  by  all,  tells  with  a  crippling  effect  on  his 
opponents.  He  referred,  during  his  speech,  to  the  often- 
repeated  sophism  denying  the  non-intrusion  of  tlie  early 
reformers  —  Knox,  Calvin,  and  Beza.  What,  he  asked,  do 
the  Earls  of  Aberdeen  and  Dalhousie  know  of  the  opinions 
of  these  men  ?  This  much,  and  no  more.  Lord  Medwyn 
inserted  in  his  speech  on  the  Auchterarder  case  a  fevr 
partial  and  garbled  extracts  from  the  writings  of  Calvin 
and  Beza,  which,  in  their  broken  and  unconnected  state, 
seemed  to  bear  a  meaning  at  variance  with  the  principles 
which  the  men  in  reality  held.  Mr.  Robertson,  of  Ellon, 
quoted  the  passages  at  second-hand,  not  omitting  even  the 
errors  of  his  lordship's  printer.  The  Earls  of  Dalhousie 
and  Aberdeen  quoted  them  at  third-hand  from  Mr.  Robert- 
son. And  such  is  the  entire  extent  of  their  lordships' 
information  on  the  subject,  and  such  the  amount  of  their 
authority.  He  then  proceeded  to  show  what  the  views  of 
tlie  reformers  on  non-intrusion  really  were; — that  they  all 
held,  with  the  ancient  fathers,  the  doctrine  for  which  the 
Cliurch  is  now  contending.  "  There  is  no  member  of  this 
presbytery,"  he  added,  "wdio  will  question  the  fact."  And 
he   was  quite  in  the  right ;    no  member  did  question   it. 


268  DEBATE   m   THE   EDINBURGH   PRESBYTERY 

He  offered  to  prove,  further,  that  Dr.  Muir,  on  the  agitated 
question,  holds  exactly  the  principles  of  Cardinal  Bellar- 
mine ;  and  the  Doctor  took  particular  care  not  to  demand 
the  proof. 

Mr.  Cunningham  was  followed  by  the  Lord  Provost  of 
Edinburgh,  —  a  gentleman  who  has  been  a  reformer  all  his 
life  long,  and  who  evidently  feels  that,  in  the  present  strug- 
gle, he  is  occupying  exactly  his  old  ground.  He  was 
listened  to  with  much  respect.  His  remarks  were  charac- 
terized by  a  vein  of  sound  good  sense  and  much  gentle- 
manly feeling.  Dr.  Muir  then  rose  to  express  his  approba- 
tion of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  bill. 

How,  we  asked,  when  listening  to  the  powerful  logic  of 
Mr.  Cunningham,  will  Dr.  Muir  contrive  to  find  answers  to 
arguments  such  as  these?  We  might  have  spared  our- 
selves the  query.  Dr.  Muir  did  not  attempt  finding  answers 
to  them.  He  sjDoke  as  if  no  one  had  spoken  before  him. 
He  reiterated  all  his  old  assertions,  and  assured  the  meeting 
that  he  was  thoroughly  conscientious  and  quite  in  earnest. 
Pascal  could  mortify  his  senses  by  shutting  his  casement 
on  a  delightful  prospect.  Dr.  Muir  restrains  the  reasoning 
faculty  in  the  same  way  out  of  a  sense  of  duty,  and  eschews 
argument  as  a  gross  temptation.  When  convicted  of  an 
absurdity,  he  talks  of  persecution,  and  clings  to  an  exposed 
misstatement  with  the  devotedness  of  a  faithful  nature 
true  to  a  friend  in  distress.  He  carries  on  every  occasion 
all  his  facts  and  all  his  opinions  home  with  him.  ISTothing 
adds  to  their  number,  —  nothing  diminishes  them;  and 
when  the  day  of  battle  comes,  he  brings  them  out  with  him 
again.  His  troops  fight  none  the  worse  for  being  killed ; 
they  rise,  all  gory,  like  Falstaff's  opponents,  and  fight  by 
the  hour;  his  antagonists  complain,  with  Macbeth,  that  his 
dead  men  come  to  "  push  them  from  their  stools." 

He  was  followed  by  Mr.  Penny  —  a  smart  gentleman, 
who  is  tedious  with  very  marked  effect  —  on  the  same 
side,  and  succeeds,  when  he  is  particularly  pathetic,  in  mak- 
ing his  audience  gay.     He  was  liberal  in  tendering  to  the 


ON   LORD    ABERDEEN'S    BILL.  2G9 

presbytery  the  benefit  of  his  law,  and  generously  advised 
them  to  submit  to  the  Court  of  Session,  without  cherishing 
the  remotest  expectation  of  being  paid  for  his  advice.  He 
excels,  too,  in  divinity.  His  speech  gradually  rose  into  a 
sermon ;  and  when  he  came  to  the  most  serious  part  of  it, 
the  gallery  laughed.  He  was  succeeded,  in  reply,  by  the 
Rev.  Mr.  Begg,  of  Liberton. 

Of  all  the  gentlemen  whom  the  caricaturists  have  failed 
in  rendering  ridiculous,  Mr.  Begg  has  escaped  best.  Some 
of  the  others  are  striking  likenesses.  There  is  no  likeness 
in  the  case  of  Mr.  Begg.  There  is  no  exaggeration  of  fea- 
ture or  figure  for  the  artist  to  catch,  and  so  he  has  caught 
none.  He  is  a  young,  good-looking  man,  rather  above  the 
middle  size,  with  a  well-developed  forehead,  —  frank,  vig- 
orous, and  energetic.  His  brief  speech  contained  one  or 
two  pointed  hits,  which  told  with  excellent  eflTect,  and  a 
historical  statement  of  much  importance  in  its  bearing  on 
the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  bill. 

He  was  succeeded  by  the  Rev.  Mr.  M'Farlane.  We  are 
admirers  of  the  good  sense  and  poetical  feeling,  but  not  of 
the  style,  of  Harvey;  whereas  the  Rev.  Mr.  MTarlane 
seems  to  admire  only  his  style.  He  rounds  his  sentences 
after  the  same  model,  and  leaves  out  only  the  poetry  and 
the  good  sense.  His  flowers  are  all  sun-flowers.  Pliny 
speaks  of  an  orator  who  used  to  set  his  periods  to  music: 
we  are  convinced  that,  if  Mr.  M'Farlane  were  well  watched, 
he  would  be  found  modulating  his  ].)eriods  by  the  full  sym- 
phonies of  the  Jewsharp.  All  feel,  however,  that  when 
delivered  in  public  they  want  their  necessary  and  original 
accompaniment;  and  we  think  the  reverend  gentleman 
should  benefit  by  the  hint.  A  respectable  and  sensible 
man,  a  Seceder,  sat  beside  us.  "  Ah,"  he  exclaimed,  with 
a  groan,  "  a  weak  brother ! "  The  I^ev.  Mr.  Bennie  fol- 
lowed, in  a  sparkling,  witty  speech,  that  at  once  awakened 
the  gallery,  and  cost  the  moderator  a  considerable  amount 
of  trouble.  All  was  extempore :  there  was  not  one  idea 
which  did  not  bear  reference  to  some  previous  remark  from 

23* 


270  REVIVAL   IN   ALNESS. 

the  opposite  side,  and  yet  every  sentence  had  the  point  of 
an  epigram.  The  labored  duUnesses  of  an  inane  and  feeble 
mind  have  rarely  been  more  pointedly  contrasted  with  the 
spontaneous  felicities  of  a  mind  singularly  ingenuous  and 
fertile  than  on  this  occasion.  Drs.  Clason  and  Gordon  fol- 
lowed in  addresses,  brief,  but  of  great  moral  weight,  and 
conceived  in  an  admirable  S23irit;  and  the  whole  was 
wound  up  by  Mr.  Cunningham. 

Nothing  more  tended  to  the  spread  of  the  Reformation 
than  the  joublic  disputations  between  the  reformers  and 
their  opponents.  There  was  breadth  of  principle  and  force 
of  argument  on  the  one  side,  united  to  generous  feeling  and 
conscious  integrity ;  and  merely  sophistry,  meanness,  mis- 
statement, and  the  disreputable  shifts  of  a  petty  ingenuity, 
on  the  other.  On  every  occasion  on  which  they  met,  the 
better  cause  prevailed  ;  and  the  people  saw  and  felt  that  it 
did.  Good  argument  is  always  2:>opular  argument.  If  Dr. 
Muir  and  his  friends  really  wish  well  to  the  people  of  Scot- 
land, they  could  still  hold  by  their  peculiar  opinions,  and 
yet  be  of  great  service  to  them.  All  that  is  necessary  is  to 
grant  their  opponents  such  oj^portunities  of  meeting  with 
them  in  the  various  parishes  of  the  country  as  they  afforded 
them  at  the  meeting  of  the  Edinburgh  Presbytery  on  Wed- 
nesday last. 


REVIVAL    IN    ALNESS. 

The  Moderate  and  Evangelical  parties,  differing  In  their  views  of 
Church  government,  differed  also,  throughout  the  whole  course  of 
their  history,  in  their  cast  of  sentiment  touching  the  religious  life. 
The  one,  pushing  the  supernatural  element  In  Christianity  gently 
into  the  background,  and  seeking  no  more,  by  way  of  realizing  the 
Christian  character,  than  a  general  observance  of  moral  precept,  a 
polite  tranquilHty  of  feeling,  and  a  cultured  elegance  and  propriety, 
recoiled  in  timorous  suspicion  from  all  religious  emotion,  sudden  in 


REVIVAL   IN   ALNESS.  271 

occurrence  and  transcendent  In  degree.  The  other,  throwing  the 
supernatural  element  into  commanding  prominence,  explicitly 
declaring  the  exertion  of  Divine  and  creative  energy  indispensable 
in  the  formation  of  Christian  character,  regarded  every  agitation  of 
the  popular  mind  arising  from  a  religious  cause  with  that  deep, 
reverent,  and  sympathizing  interest  wliich  befitted  a  direct  manifes- 
tation of  Divine  power.  This,  like  every  other  distinction  between 
the  parties,  was  vividly  apprehended  and  profoundly  understood  by 
Mr.  Miller.  It  is  brought  out  in  the  following  article.  "  Dr.  Muir's 
Declaration,"  to  which  reference  is  made,  can  be  easily  imagined  as 
a  manifesto  on  the  part  of  certain  of  the  Moderate  leaders.  —  Ed. 

We  extract  the  following  interesting  notice  of  one  of 
the  recent  revivals  in  Ross-shire,  from  the  Inverness  Cou- 
rier of  Wednesday  last.  It  comes  from  the  pen  of  a  cor- 
respondent of  that  paper,  —  a  person  who  seems  to  have 
witnessed  what  he  describes  in  no  light  or  irreverent  spirit ; 
and  we  have  been  favored  with  several  j^rivate  letters  on 
the  subject  from  the  same  part  of  the  country,  which  cor- 
roborate his  statements : 

"  The  great  religious  movements  which  are  taking  place  in  various 
quarters  of  this  county  are  drawing  a  large  share  of  attention ;  and 
a  short  account  of  what  has  occurred  in  the  parish  of  Alness  may 
not  be  uninteresting  to  some  of  your  readers. 

"  The  usual  fast-day  preparatory  to  the  celebration  of  the  Lord's 
Supper  was  held  on  Thursday,  the  30th  ultimo  ;  but  nothing  remark- 
able was  observed  on  that  day.  The  first  symptoms  of  anything  like 
an  awakening  made  their  appearance  on  the  Friday  evening,  when, 
under  the  ministrations  of  that  faithful  and  self-denying  servant  of 
God,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Macdonald,  of  Ferintosh,  a  considerable  number 
were  brought  under  concern,  and  made  to  cry  out,  beneath  the 
stings  of  an  awakened  conscience,  '  What  must  we  do  to  be  saved? ' 
During  the  sermon  which  completed  the  duties  of  the  sacramental 
Sabbath,  the  movements  in  the  congregation,  which  had  been  begun 
on  the  Friday  evening,  were  increased  to  a  much  gi-eater  extent. 
Then,  but   more   especially  on  the   services  of  the  following  day 


272  REVIVAL   IN   ALNESS. 

(Monday),  one  could  not  cast  his  eyes  around  in  any  direction 
among  the  thousands  collected  on  the  occasion,  without  witnessing 
in  almost  every  half  dozen  of  hearers  one,  if  not  more,  deeply 
moved,  —  some  sobbing  audibly ;  others,  evidently  by  the  greatest 
effort,  restraining  themselves  from  bursting  out  aloud ;  while  many, 
utterly  unable  to  conmiand  their  emotions,  gave  vent  in  loud  screams 
to  their  agonized  feelings.  Nor  was  this  confined  to  any  age  or  sex. 
The  young  and  the  aged,  the  gray-headed  man  and  the  child  of 
tender  years,  might  everywhere  be  observed  deeply  affected ;  and 
we  conceive  we  are  within  the  mark  when  we  say,  that  on  this  occa- 
sion many  hundreds  were  brought  under  serious  impressions ;  for 
there  is  scarcely  a  family  in  the  district  but  has  one,  two,  or  more  of 
its  members  under  deep  convictions.  It  was  truly  a  heart-stirring 
sight ;  and  we  could  wish  that  those  Avho  make  a  mofk  of  such  scenes 
could  have  looked  upon  it.  Insensible  to  every  good  and  holy  feel- 
ing must  he  have  been  who  could  have  beheld  it  with  cold  indiffer- 
ence. 

"  When  witnessing  or  hearing  of  such  events,  one  is  irresistibly 
led  to  ask.  Is  this  the  work  of  the  Spirit  of  God  V  Though  time 
alone  can  give  a  perfecilij  satisfactory  answer  to  this  question,  yet 
there  are  circumstances  attending  this  particular  work  which  tend 
to  show  that  it  is  indeed  genuine,  and  not  spurious.  This  revival 
has  followed  the  means  which  the  word  of  God  teaches  to  employ. 
Prayer-meetings  have  for  some  time  been  established  through  the 
parish  by  the  faithful  and  zealous  clergyman,  JMr.  Flyter,  who  has 
now  had  the  satisfaction  of  seeing  his  labors  blessed  and  his  suppli- 
cations answered.  There  was  nothing  in  the  instrument  which  could 
lead  us  to  attribute  the  result  to  him.  He  is  well  known  to  all  who 
heard  him ;  and  his  style  of  prea(;hing  is  as  familiar  to  most  of  them 
as  is  that  of  their  own  clergymen ;  and  he  has  been  often  known  to 
proclaim  the  thunders  of  Sinai  Avith  as  much,  if  not  v^^ith  greater 
force,  on  previous  occasions.  Indeed,  the  terrors  of  the  law  and 
the  consolations  of  the  gospel  were,  as  they  ever  ought  to  be,  blended 
together." 

We  passed  a  few  clays  during  the  summers  of  the  last 
two  years  in  the  scene  of  the  revival.  It  is  a  semi-High- 
land district  of  considerable  extent,  bordered  by  the  Frith 
of  Cromarty  on  the  south,  and  ascending,  towards  the 
north,  from  a  richly  variegated  and  comparatively  populous 


REVIVAL   IN   ALNESS.  273 

level,  into  a  mountainous  and  thinly-inhabited  tract  of 
country.  The  whole  forms  a  portion  of  what  has  been 
termed  the  land  of  the  Monroes,  —  a  clan  described  by 
Buchanan  as  one  of  the  most  warlike  in  Scotland,  and 
which,  unlike  most  of  our  Highland  clans,  embraced,  at  an 
early  period,  the  doctrines  of  the  Reformation.  The  name 
has  since  been  widely  spread.  It  gave  to  Gustavus  Adol- 
i:)hus  some  of  his  bravest  general  officers,  and  to  the  United 
States  of  America  one  of  their  best  presidents.  But  though 
now  considerably  mixed  with  other  names,  through  the 
breaking  up  of  the  feudal  system,  it  still  abounds  in  the 
district.  The  people  in  general  are  a  simple,  but  not 
unintelligent  race,  and  Avarmly  attached,  through  the  asso- 
ciations of  nearly  three  centuries,  to  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land. There  is  a  hollow  still  shown  among  the  hills,  where 
their  ancestors  used  to  meet  for  religious  worship  during 
the  persecution  of  Charles  II.  Their  minister  of  that 
period  had  been  amongst  the  faithful  few  who,  in  the 
northern  jDortion  of  the  kingdom,  had  chosen  rather  to 
quit  their  livings  than  outrage  their  consciences;  and, 
despite  the  utmost  efforts  of  the  Bishop  of  Ross,  —  as 
thorough  an  Erastian  as  Dr.  Bryce  himself,  —  he  succeeded 
in  finding  protection  among  his  people  for  nearly  thirteen 
years  after  the  term  of  his  ejectment.  In  the  year  1G75, 
says  Wodrow,  he  celebrated  the  communion  on  the  bor- 
ders of  his  parish,  amid  an  immense  concourse ;  and  "  so 
plentiful  was  the  effusion  of  the  Spirit,  that  the  oldest 
Christians  present  never  witnessed  the  like."  Among  many 
others,  says  the  historian,  one  poor  man,  who  had  gone  to 
hear  him  merely  out  of  curiosity,  was  so  affected,  that  when 
some  of  his  neighbors  blamed  him  for  his  temerity,  and 
told  him  that  the  bishop  would  punish  him  for  it  by  taking 
away  his  horse  and  cow,  he  assured  them  that  in  such  a 
cause  he  was  content  to  lose  not  merely  all  his  worldly 
goods,  but  his  head  also.  Eventually,  however,  the  good 
minister  fell  into  the  hands  of  his  enemies,  and,  after  wear- 
ing out  many  years,  amid  squalor  and  wretchedness,  in  a 


274  REVIVAL    IN   ALNESS. 

cliingeon  of  the  Bass,  he  was  released  but  to  die  —  a  vic- 
tim to  the  cruel  hardships  to  which  he  had  been  subjected. 
The  parish  at  a  later  period,  under  the  ministry  of  the 
author  of  an  admirable  Treatise  on  Justification,  well 
known  to  theologians  (Mr.  Fraser,  of  Alness),  was  the 
scene  of  a  second  revival.  It  took  place  sometime  about 
the  middle  of  the  last  century ;  nor  had  its  effects  wholly 
disappeared  at  the  time  of  our  last  visit.  The  district  had 
still  its  race  of  patriarchal  worthies,  though  every  year  was 
lessening  their  number,  for  the  greater  part  of  them  had 
reached  the  extreme  verge  of  life.  There  was,  besides,  a 
hereditary  respect  and  reverence  among  the  people  in  gen- 
eral for  the  beliefs  and  the  services  of  religion.  They 
remembered  their  f ithers  —  the  lives  v/hich  they  had 
lived,  and  the  hope  in  which  they  had  died  ;  and  the  recol- 
lection had  its  legitimate  influence.  It  has  been  common 
w4th  skeptics  of  a  low  order —  men  who  absurdly  borrowed 
their  analogies  more  from  the  principles  of  human  juris- 
prudence than  from  the  inevitable  laws  of  nature  —  to 
challenge  the  great  truth  of  revelation,  so  often  exemplified 
in  the  history  of  nations  and  of  flxmilies,  that  the  iniquities 
of  the  ancestors  are  visited  on  the  descendants.  And  yet 
we  see  in  a  thousand  instances  that,  from  the  very  nature 
of  things  (another  name  for  the  will  of  Deity),  the  law 
must  as  certainly  exist  as  the  law  of  gravitation  itself 
The  corresponding  truth  embodied  in  the  same  command- 
ment, that  blessings  and  mercies  are  conferred  on  thousands 
among  the  posterity  of  the  faithful  and  the  devoted,  has 
been  less  marked  and  seldomer  challenged ;  but  it  is,  like 
the  other,  a  truth  often  confirmed  by  experience,  and  in  no 
cases  more  frequently  than  in  cases  of  revivals.  Where 
the  Divine  fire  has  been  kindled  of  old,  it  seems  ever  readi- 
est, though  often  after  long  intervals,  to  ascend  anew ;  and 
the  cause,  so  far  as  such  things  can  be  accounted  for  on 
understood  principles,  seems  to  be  the  one  just  hinted  at 
in  the  caseW  the  parishioners  of  Alness.  There  survive 
in  such  localities  fond  and  respectful  recollections  oi  the 


REVIVAL    IX   ALNESS.  275 

worth  of  the  departed,  associated  with  what  we  may  term 
a  traditional  belief  in  the  excellence  of  Christianity;  and 
thus  the  mind  is  kept  more  open  to  receive  as  good  what 
their  ancestors  proved  and  testified  to  be  empluUically  so. 

We  visited  Alness,  on  the  last  occasion,  early  in  the 
May  of  1839,  when  the  excellent  clergyman  of  the  parish 
was  on  the  eve  of  setting  out  for  the  General  Assembly. 
The  Auchterarder  case  had  been  just  decided  in  the  House 
of  Lords,  and  the  present  difficulties  of  the  Church  were 
very  generally  anticipated  by  the  graver  parishioners. 
There  was  a  deep  interest  excited  in  this  remote  district. 
Dr.  M'Crie,  in  writing  of  the  General  Assembly  seven 
years  ago,  laments  the  indifference  with  which  its  meetings 
had  come  to  be  regarded  by  the  people,  compared  with 
the  deep  interest  which  their  fathers  had  felt  in  them. 
"Where,"  he  asks,  "is  the  general  anxiety  of  the  country, 
and  where  the  fervent  supplications  for  the  countenance 
and  direction  of  Heaven,  in  the  deliberations  of  the  Assem- 
bly, which  were  wont  to  resound  from  the  most  distant 
glens  and  mountains  of  Scotland  ? "  We  could  have  in- 
stanced at  least  one  district.  The  "mevi"  of  Alness,  at 
the  time  of  our  visit,  were  holding  their  prayer-meetings 
in  behalf  of  the  Church;  and  we  need  hardly  say  on 
which  side  their  minister  came  to  register  his  vote.  Mod- 
eratism  has  disturbed  the  country  with  its  forced  settle- 
ments, but  it  never  yet  excited  the  spleen  of  a  newspaper 
press  by  its  revivals,  and  it  always  flourishes  most  where 
there  are  no  prayer-meetings  to  perplex  its  operations. 

We  perceive  the  minister  of  an  adjacent  parish  has 
affixed  his  name  to  Dr.  Muir's  declaration,  —  a  circumstance 
which  has  enabled  his  parishioners  fully  to  understand  it. 
Tliis  gentleman  has  been  now  about  four  and  twenty  years 
in  the  enjoyment  of  the  temporalities  of  the  cure.  When 
obtruded  upon  the  parish,  it  contained  no  Dissenters.  The 
people,  like  their  neighbors,  were  marked  by  their  cliurch- 
going  habits;  and  the  church,  a  roomy  and  commodious 
building,   was  filled   every   Sunday  from  gable  to  gable. 


276  REVIVAL   IN   ALNESS. 

About  one  per  cent,  of  the  parishioners  attend  it  now. 
Within  the  last  few  years  a  meeting-house  has  sprung  up 
in  its  neighborhood.  Some  of  the  younger  people  during 
the  time  of  divine  service  wander  into  the  fields ;  the  rest, 
who  have  not  quitted  the  Church,  travel  far  to  attend  the 
ministrations  of  the  clergymen  of  other  parishes.  The 
whole  congregation  did  not  comprise  twenty  persons  when 
we  heard  sermon  under  the  intrusionist  about  a  twelve- 
month ago,  and  of  these  nearly  one-half  had  fallen  asleep 
ere  the  middle  of  the  service.  And  such,  as  instanced  in 
Alness  and  this  unfortunate  parish,  are  the  comparative 
merits  and  comparative  popularity  of  the  two  parties  in 
the  Church.  Would  Sir  Robert  Peel  and  the  Earl  of 
Aberdeen  deem  it  a  stroke  of  profound  statemanship  to 
pass  a  measure  which  would  have  the  efiect  of  ejecting 
from  their  charges  men  such  as  the  minister  of  Alness,  and 
of  setting  men  such  as  his  neighbor  in  their  place?  And 
yet  there  is  scarce  a  Presbyterian  in  Scotland  so  ignorant 
as  not  to  know  that  such  would  be  the  effect  of  the  bill 
which  the  one  so  unwillingly  relinquished,  and  which  the 
other  would  have  supported  so  readily. 

The  Rev.  Mr.  M'Donald,  of  Ferintosh,  whose  labors  have 
been  so  signally  honored  in  the  recent  revivals  in  Ross- 
shire,  has  been  long  known  and  esteemed  in  that  part  of 
the  country  as  one  of  the  soundest  and  most  zealous  divines 
in  the  Church.  How  marvellously  have  times  changed 
within  the  last  twenty  years  !  Little  more  than  that  period 
has  elapsed  since  this  gentleman  was  summoned  to  the  bar 
of  the  General  Assembly  for  preaching,  in  the  Strathbogie 
and  Aberdeen  districts,  exactly  the  same  doctrines  which 
have  been  rendered  so  powerful  to  alarm  and  awaken  within 
the  last  few  months  in  Tarbat,  Tain,  and  Alness.  He  had 
been  guilty  of  preaching  the  gospel  where,  in  these  days, 
the  gospel  was  very  rarely  heard.  Dr.  Mearns,  of  Aberdeen, 
another  of  Dr.  Muir's  supporters,  took  the  lead  among  his 
assailants ;  but,  notwithstanding  all  the  energy  and  zeal 
of  the   party,  the   case   unaccountably   broke   down,   and 


REVIVAL   m   ALNESS.  277 

Mr.  M'Donald  was  discharged  unharmed.  His  assailants, 
however,  contrived  to  legislate  on  the  subject  by  way  of 
prevention,  and  embodied  their  decision  in  the  shape  of 
a  declaration,  denouncing  it  as  "  irregular  and  unconsti- 
tutional for  a  minister  of  the  Church  to  perform  divine 
service  in  the  meeting-house  of  a  Dissenter,  or,  during 
his  journeys  from  place  to  place,  in  the  open  air,  in  other 
parishes  than  his  own."  We  find  a  masterly  review  of  the 
whole  case,  by  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson,  in  the  "  Christian 
Instructor "  for  1819;  and  rarely  has  irreligion  and  intol- 
erance, wiien  masquerading  under  the  forms  of  an  eccle- 
siastical decision,  been  more  powerfully  exposed.  The 
Doctor  had  to  battle  in  the  minority  in  these  days,  and  to 
endure  many  a  defeat ;  but  his  labors  were  not  in  vain. 
He  did  not  influence  his  opponents,  for  that  would  have 
required  something  more  than  argument,  —  something  on 
their  part  as  well  as  on  his,  —  candor,  perhaps,  and  Christian 
principle ;  but  the  country  listened  to  him ;  and  so  exten- 
sive and  so  marked  has  been  the  change,  that  the  very 
individual  whom  he  then  defended  against  the  wrath  of 
the  Presbytery  of  Strathbogie  was  empowered  by  the 
Church  last  spring  to  do  in  that  district  what  he  then 
narrowly  escaped  being  thrust  out  of  the  Church  for  doing. 
Mr.  M'Donald,  of  Ferintosh,  was  one  of  the  ministers  lately 
deputed  by  the  Commission  to  preach  in  Strathbogie. 

There  is  much  comfort  in  the  reflection,  that  in  the  time 
of  the  Church's  difficulties  her  adorable  Head  should  be 
thus  manifesting  himself  in  her  favor.  It  will  matter  little 
^v\\o  may  be  among  her  enemies  if  he  rank  among  her 
friends.  The  Book  of  Providence  contains  many  diflicult 
passages;  but  there  are  others  of  which  the  meaning  seems 
comparatively  obvious ;  and  of  these  not  a  few  refer  to 
periods  of  revival  in  the  Church.  The  time  of  the  second 
Reformation  was  one  of  these.  The  purpose  of  mercy  at 
that  period  extended  to  more  than  individuals,  —  it  era- 
braced  the  entire  Church.  There  was  a  season  of  severe 
and  protracted  trial   at   hand ;   and   the   infusion   of  new 

2-1 


278  REVIVAL   IN    ALNESS. 

vigor  gave  earnest  that  the  "  strength  was  to  be  according 
to  the  need,"  and  that  she  was  to  survive  the  struggle, 
and  ultimately  to  triumph  in  it.  Had  she  been  destined 
to  extinction,  her  vigor  would  not  have  been  increased. 
Another  very  remarkable  i:)eriod  of  revival  occurred  in  the 
west  of  Scotland  shortly  after  the  time  of  the  Secession. 
The  Church  had  sunk  into  a  state  of  miserable  depression. 
Her  strength  seemed  passing  wholly  from  her  to  the  body 
of  devout  and  venerable  men  whom  the  high-handed 
majorities  that  constituted  at  once  her  weakness  and  her 
shame  had  thrust  beyond  her  pale ;  her  people  were  joining 
them  in  thousands;  and  it  seemed  as  if  the  mere  caput 
mortuimi  that  remained  behind  could  not  long  continue  to 
exist.  The  breath  of  public  opinion  in  less  than  half  an 
age  would  have  acquired  strength  enough  to  sweep  it 
away ;  for,  though  an  Establishment  has  existed  in  Ireland 
without  the  people  for  centuries,  it  could  not  exist  in 
Scotland  without  them  for  half  a  century.  The  characters 
of  the  two  nations  are  essentially  different.  At  this  crisis, 
however,  the  separation  to  a  considerable  degree  was  staid. 
The  revival  at  Cambuslang,  Kilsyth,  Kirkintilloch,  and 
Muthill,  took  place.  There  was  thus  proof  vouchsafed 
that,  though  many  of  God's  people  had  left  the  Church, 
God  himself  had  not  left  it;  and,  in  consequence,  thousands 
who  would  have  otherwise  gone  over  to  the  Secession 
remained  in  her  communion.  Chatham,  as  quoted  by 
Junius,  could  speak  of  infusing  a  new  portion  of  health 
into  the  constitution  of  the  country,  to  enable  it  to  bear 
its  infirmities.  There  was  thus  a  new  portion  of  health 
infused  into  the  Church,  and  she  was  enabled  to  bear  the 
infirmities  under  which  she  would  otherwise  have  sunk, 
until  a  day  when,  with  invigorated  powers,  she  has  begun 
to  shake  them  off.  The  history  of  the  future  can  alone 
read  the  legitimate  comment  on  the  economy  of  Provi- 
dence in  the  present  revivals ;  but  who  can  doubt  that 
they  are  tokens  of  mercy  ?  They  read  a  lesson  to  religious 
Dissenters  which  they  would  do  well  to  ponder  in  connec- 


CONSERVATISM    ON   REVIVALS.  279 

tion  with  the  advice  given  by  Gamaliel  to  the  Jewish 
Council.  If  God  be  for  us,  assuredly  they  should  not  be 
ao-ainst  us. 


CONSERVATISM  ON  EEYIVALS. 

"My  friend  Smart,"  said  Johnson,  "  used  to  show  the 
disturbance  of  his  mind  by  falling  upon  his  knees  and 
saying  his  prayers  in  the  street.  He  was  deemed  mad, 
sir ;  and  yet,  rationally  speaking,  it  is  much  greater  mad- 
ness not  to  pray  at  all,  than  to  pray  as  poor  Smart  did; 
though  I  am  afraid  there  are  so  many  who  do  not  pray, 
that,  through  the  generality  of  the  neglect,  people  never 
think  of  calling  their  understandings  in  question."  Now, 
what  was  strong  sound  sense  in  the  days  of  Johnson  is 
very  excellent  sense  stilL  If  a  man  look  exclusively  to 
the  approbation  of  his  neighbors,  it  is  very  unsafe  for  him 
to  deviate  from  the  ordinary  course,  and  quite  as  much  so 
to  rise  above  the  common  level  of  conduct  as  to  sink 
beneath  it.  There  is  a  mediocrity  of  virtue  which  it  is 
dangerous  to  exceed,  and  a  subdued  style  of  religion, 
"  content  to  dwell  in  decencies  forever,"  to  which  men 
who  are  often  loudest  in  their  praise  of  toleration  extend 
their  tolerance  exclusively.  The  Judaism  of  Gamaliel 
would  have  been  esteemed  by  this  class  as  the  well-regu- 
lated religion  of  a  man  of  sense ;  the  overpowering  con- 
victions of  Paul,  after  his  journey  to  Damascus,  they  would 
have  denounced  as  fanaticism.  They  deem  the  form  of 
Christianity  which  can  exist  independently  of  conversion  a 
much  better  thing  than  the  Christianity  which  conversion 
must  precede  ;  and  regard  the  man  whom  the  sense  of  an 
awful  futurity  never  moved  as  a  wiser  person  than  the 
man  whom  it  moves  so  deejjly  that  he  proves  unable  to 
conceal  his  feelings. 

Now,  to  the  unrecked  madness  of  this  class  —  the  class 
whose  number,  according  to  Johnson,  prevents  people  from 


280  CONSERVATISM    ON   REVIVALS. 

calling  their  understandings  in  question  —  does  the  recent 
work  of  revival  in  Scotland  owe  the  opposition  which  it 
has  received,  and  the  contumely  which  has  been  heaped 
upon  it.  The  myriads  of  which  the  class  is  composed  have 
been  startled  from  their  propriety  by  discovering  that  the 
principle  which  was  potent  enough  to  overpower  the  jailer 
of  old,  and  to  compel  him  to  cry  aloud  in  anguish  and 
uncertainty,  should  have  lost  none  of  its  energy  since,  and 
that  it  operates  on  the  human  mind  now  after  exactly  the 
same  fashion  that  it  operated  then.  An  attenuated  and 
shrivelled  form  of  Christianity  had  become  one  of  the 
decencies  of  society,  and  men  took  praise  to  themselves 
for  treating  it  with  good  manners.  Religion  had  sunk 
into  a  respectable  mediocrity,  and  had  become,  therefore,  a 
fit  subject  for  being  not  only  tolerated,  but  recommended, 
by  the  class  who  would  have  extended  neither  recommen- 
dation nor  tolerance  to  its  Author.  We  remarked  on  a 
former  occasion  that  the  natural  principle  of  admiring  or 
enduring  only  the  mediocrity  of  virtue  was  exemplified  on 
Calvary  with  a  peculiar  force  and  emphasis,  of  which  the 
history  of  the  universe  can  aff"ord  no  other  instance,  by 
showing  that  it  was  as  fatal  to  rise  infinitely  above  as  to 
sink  greatly  below  the  medium  and  average  line.  The 
world  could  tolerate  neither  our  Saviour  nor  the  two 
thieves,  and  it  therefore  crucified  both  him  and  them. 
And  Christianity  in  Scotland  no  sooner  begins  to  resemble 
its  Master,  than  the  men  who  tolerated,  and  even  admired 
it  in  its  state  of  tame  and  inefiicient  mediocrity,  turn  round 
to  spit  and  revile,  and,  in  short,  to  treat  it  exactly  as  they 
would  have  treated  Him.  We  speak,  of  course,  of  only 
its  more  respectable  enemies,  the  mediocritists,  —  the  men 
who,  though  they  would  have  crucified  our  Saviour,  would 
have  crucified  the  thieves  also.  We  do  not  speak  of  the 
men  who,  like  some  of  our  contemporaries,  would  have 
accomplished  only  half  the  work,  by  suffering  the  malefac- 
tors to  escape. 

Among  the  more  respectable  class  we  rank  a  Liverpool 


CONSERVATISM    ON  REVIVALS.  281 

conservative  journai,  to  which  our  attention  has  just  been 
called,  —  a  strenuous  advocate  of  Protestantism  in  Ireland, 
and  of  Church  extension  on  the  Episcopalian  basis.  This 
paper  collects  its  facts  from  the  Aberdeen  Herald,  and 
decides  unhesitatingly,  on  the  evidence  furnished,  that  the 
"  proceedings"  at  Rosskeen  must  have  been  at  least  "  un- 
seemly, if  not  blasphemous;"  and  expresses  a  wish  that 
the  leaders  in  the  Church  should  exert  themselves  "  to 
prevent,  or  at  least  restrain,  such  outbreakings  of  ignorant 
fanaticism."  Now,  with  the  Aberdeen  Herald  we  have  no 
controversy.  We  beheve  the  ingenious  editor  advocates 
the  substitution  of  a  knowledge  qualification  for  the  exist- 
ing property  qualification,  —  unquestionably  in  the  sincere 
and  honest  hope  of  furnishing  the  country  with  a  more 
liberal  and  efficient  constituency.  We  understand,  too, 
that  he  excludes  all  religious  knowledge  from  his  scheme, 
in  the  natural  and  not  very  blamable  fear  of  being 
himself  deprived  of  the  franchise  through  the  exercise  of 
his  own  test.  Some  of  the  remarks  of  the  Liverpool  con- 
servative, however,  we  shall  take  the  liberty  of  examining : 

"  We  cherish  the  most  sincere  regard  for  the  Church  of  Scodand, 
and  wish  to  see  her  shine  in  the  pure  and  chastening  light  of  other 
and  worthier  days  ;  hut  it  is  impossible  to  witness  such  proceedings 
without  experiencing  feelings  of  the  deepest  regret  and  alarm.  We 
should  not  perhaps  have  noticed  this  affair  at  Rosskeen  at  all,  had 
we  not  been  aware  that  any  apology  founded  upon  the  obscurity  of 
the  place  cannot  be  offered  or  pleaded  by  the  Church ;  for  it  is 
not  many  months  since  our  attention  was  draAvn  to  similar  scenes  in 
the  vicinity  of  Glasgow,  which  several  otherwise  estimable  clergy- 
men of  the  Establishment  endeavored  to  justify.  We  allude  to  the 
fjinatical  follies  perpetrated  at  Kilsyth,  and  defended  by  the  Rev. 
INIr.  Burns  and  other  ministers,  who  ought  to  know  better,  and 
entertain  more  elevated  views  of  religion." 

Now,  this  passage  was  written  by  a  gentleman  who  pro- 
fesses to  believe  in  the  thirty-nine  articles,  Avho  denounces 
the  anti-scriptural  policy  of  the  present  ministry,   depre- 

24* 


282  CONSERVATISM   ON   REVIVALS. 

cates  the  spread  of  Popeiy,  laments  over  the  decline  of 
Protestantism  in  Ireland,  and  advocates  the  extension  of 
the  English  Church.  It  is  fraught  with  instruction.  It  is 
because  the  conservatives  who  can  think  and  write  in  this 
manner  are  so  numerous  that  the  party  are  so  inefficient, 
and  that  they  so  utterly  belie  their  name.  Why  is  it  that 
Protestantism  in  the  Episcopalian  Church  of  Ireland  should 
have  seen,  during  a  century  and  a  half,  the  Roman  Catho- 
lic population  of  the  country  doubling  and  quadrupling 
around  it,  without  any  corresponding  increase  in  the 
limited  number  of  its  own  adherents,  —  that,  in  brief,  on 
this  unhappy  arena  practical  error  should  have  proved  a 
stronger  principle  than  ostensible  and  theoretic  truth? 
Simply  because  the  practical  error  had  a  principle  of 
vitality  in  it,  —  that  it  was  a  vigorous  and  powerful  super- 
stition, —  and  that  the  nominal  faith  opposed  to  it  wanted 
life  and  vigor.  Dead  forms  of  truth  cannot  contend  with 
living  principles,  be  the  principles  as  base  or  erroneous 
as  tliey  may.  Living  Socialism  is  an  overmatch  for  dead 
Christianity.  Now,  one  of  the  grand  errors  of  what  we 
have  termed  the  mediocritists  in  religion  —  a  class  that 
still  hold  nineteen-twentieths  of  the  patronages  of  the 
Church,  and  who  have  long  overlaid  its  energies  both  in 
England  and  our  own  country  —  arises  from  their  igno- 
rance of  this  important,  though  surely  simple,  fact.  They 
established  a  dead  Protestantism  in  Ireland,  and  yet  cal- 
culated on  its  strength  as  living  truth.  They  patronized 
an  inefficient  Moderatism  in  Scotland  as  a  rational  and 
modified  form  of  Christianity,  and  held  that,  as  it  was  in 
the  main  a  very  excellent  and  sensible  thing,  with  no  fanati- 
cism in  it,  the  masses  would  straightway  submit  their  pas- 
sions to  its  government.  And  now,  a  numerous  body  of 
the  same  class,  though  with,  we  trust,  a  mixture  of  good 
and  wise  men  among  them,  are  employed  in  extending  their 
Church  —  trusting,  doubtless,  through  a  religion  which  es- 
chews revivals,  to  absorb  dissent  and  annihilate  Chartism. 
Would  that  tliey  were  more   intimately   acquainted  with 


COXSBRVATISM  ON  REVIVALS.  283 

the  Laws  which  regulate  antagonist  forces,  and  knew  better 
how  to  calculate  on  their  respective  degrees  of  power! 
There  is  more  strength  in  Chartism  alone,  weak  and  dis- 
reputable as  it  is,  than  in  all  the  modified  Christianity  in 
England  that  scoffs  at  revivals.  The  man  who  writes  as 
above  of  the  work  of  revival  in  Ross-shire,  —  a  work  in 
which  Episcopalians  such  as  John  Newton  and  Thomas 
Scott,  or  Archbishops  Usher  and  Leighton,  would  have 
rejoiced  to  join,  —  can  write  as  follows,  and  in  the  same 
column,  of  religious  education : 

"  The  Church  appears  to  have  thrown  off  the  lethargy  which 
temporizing  and  undecided  legislation  had  brought  upon  her,  and  to 
have  set  herself  to  work,  as  far  at  least  as  this  extensive  diocese  is 
concerned,  for  the  regeneration  of  our  deluded  population,  in  right 
good  earnest.  There  can  be  no  doubt  whatever  on  the  minds  of 
any  persons  who  have  given  attention  to  the  subject,  that  the  in- 
struction of  the  middle  classes  on  religious  principles  has  been  lament- 
ably neglected,  or  that  dissent  and  infidelity  have  labored  to  sow 
their  tares  in  ground  predisposed  to  receive  and  nurture  their  vicious 
qualities.  To  this,  in  a  great  measure,  may  be  ascribed  the  preva- 
lence, in  the  present  day,  of  Chartism,  Socialism,  Radicalism,  and 
the  other  delusions  of  which  the  merely  scientifically  tutored  is  so 
frequently  made  the  victim." 

There  is  a  moral  chemistry  in  the  ecclesiastical  questions 
agitated  in  Scotland  in  the  present  day  that  is  fast  decom- 
posing the  old  elements  of  party.  How  completely,  for 
instance,  does  our  first  extract  neutralize  the  effect  of  the 
second.  Dugald  Dalgetty  was  of  opinion  that  "Protes- 
tantism "  was  a  very  respectable  watchword  when  pay  was 
good  and  quarters  comfortable  ;  but  the  confession  betrayed 
the  mercenary.  Now,  on  a  similar  principle,  the  Conser- 
vative who  wishes  to  render  "religious  education"  an  effec- 
tive watchword  for  political  purposes  in  Scotland,  should 
avoid  sneering  at  religious  revivals.  We  find  our  contem- 
porary mightily  prefers  the  policy  of  Dr.  Bryce  in  Church 
matters  to  the  policy  of  Dr.  Chalmers.     His  idea  of  religion 


284  CONSERYATISai   ON   REVIVALS. 

seems  to  be,  that  it  is  a  principle  at  once  very  pliant  and 
very  powerful,  —  a  something  for  the  Court  of  Session  to 
control  at  will,  but  able  to  control  everything  else,  however 
potent,  —  a  moving  power,  that,  like  steam,  can  overthrow 
mountains,  and  yet  be  turned  off  by  a  stop-cock,  —  a  Sam- 
son, feeble  and  irresistible  by  turns,  that  can  be  bound  with 
green  Avithes  at  one  time,  and  set  loose  to  rout  an  embattled 
host  at  another.  A  word  in  his  ear.  If  the  stop-cock  be 
able  to  turn  it  off,  the  mountain  will  never  be  levelled  by 
it.  If  the  green  withes  bind  it,  the  Philistines  have  noth- 
ing to  fear  from  it.  The  religion  represented  by  the 
Moderatism  of  Scotland  is  a  principle  which  would  yield 
readily  to  the  Court  of  Session ;  but  there  does  not  exist 
a  single  antagonist  power  to  which  it  would  not  yield  as 
readily.  It  is  a  principle  destined,  not  to  control,  but  to 
be  controlled. 

We  have  oftener  than  once  expressed  our  thorough 
confidence  in  the  work  of  revival  in  Ross-shire.  We  are 
acquainted  with  the  ministers  engaged  in  it,  the  style  and 
manner  of  their  preaching,  and  the  doctrines  which  have 
been  rendered  effectual  in  its  production ;  and  we  are 
assured  a  time  is  yet  coming  when  many  of  its  present 
enemies  will  be  content  to  speak  of  it  in  a  different  tone. 
There  is  a  numerous  class  who  can  more  than  tolerate 
religion  in  its  reflection,  though  they  may  hate  it  heartily 
in  its  real  presence,  —  who  can  admire  it  when  it  becomes 
the  theme  of  poetry,  or  is  embodied  in  a  classic  literature, 
but  not  before,  —  who  deem  family  worship  a  very  excel- 
lent thing  in  the  stanzas  of  the  "Cottar's  Saturday  Night," 
and  Christianity  a  noble  principle  in  the  pages  of  Cowper. 
Now,  to  such  men  religion  appears  good  in  its  reflex  influ- 
ences, though  not  in  itself;  and  to  such  the  scene  of  the 
revival  will  present  appearances  in  the  future  more  in 
accordance  with  their  taste  and  fancy  than  those  which  it 
exhibits  at  present.  The  effects  of  a  similar  revival  in  the 
district,  which  took  place  in  the  early  half  of  the  last 
century,  were  felt  in  it  for  more  than  eighty  years  after. 


THE    OUTRAGE   AT   MARNOCH.  285 

There  were  few  dwellings,  however  humble,  in  which, 
regularly  as  the  day  rose  and  set,  family  worship  was  not 
kept;  and  in  the  com-se  of  an  evening  walk  the  voice  of 
psalms  might  be  heard  from  almost  every  hamlet.  There 
was  a  higher  tone  of  morals  among  the  inhabitants  than 
in  many  localities  at  least  as  generally  fjivored ;  more 
content,  too,  with  not  less  privation;  —  no  Chartism,  no 
Socialism,  no  infidelity.  The  people,  in  short,  were  what 
the  statesmen  termed  a  "  well-conditioned  people."  Effects 
such  as  these  should  render  even  the  utilitarian  tolerant 
of  revivals ;  and  why  not  also  the  litterateur  f  They  have 
to  wait  only  a  very  little. 


THE   OUTRAGE   AT   MARNOCH. 

The  instalment  of  Mr.  Edwards  in  the  temporalities  of 
Marnoch  took  place  on  Thursday  last,  and  proved  the 
occasion  of  a  scene  without  precedent  in  the  history  of 
the  Church  of  Scotland.  On  many  former  occasions  have 
the  forms  of  religion  been  prostituted  to  serve  very  vile 
purposes.  On  many  occasions  has  the  disguise  of  profes- 
sion proved  all  too  flimsy  to  cover  the  meanness  of  the 
objects  which  it  has  been  assumed  to  conceal.  But  on  no 
former  occasion  has  the  prostitution  been  equally  public, 
or  the  utter  inadequacy  of  the  disguise  rendered  palpable 
in  the  same  degree  to  a  circle  equally  extensive.  To  the 
profanation  at  Marnoch  the  eyes  of  an  entire  community 
have  been  directed,  and  the  consequences  which  it  involves 
affect  the  religious  interests  of  a  whole  kingdom. 

A  heavy  snow-storm  had  burst  out  on  the  preceding 
Wednesday ;  and  on  the  morning  of  Thursday  the  country 
round  Marnoch  was  deeply  enveloped  in  snow.  Huge 
wreaths  of  drift  had  choked  up  every  road  and  pathway, 
and  the  stream  which  sweeps  past  the  manse  and  church- 
yard was  toiling,  brown  and  swollen,  through  the  half- 


286  THE    OUTRAGE   AT   MARNOCH. 

melted  accumulations  that  in  some  places  arched  it  over 
from  bank  to  bank,  and  in  others  had  sunk  undermined 
into  the  torrent.  It  was  no  day  for  journeying  pleasantly, 
or  even  safely ;  but  the  interest  of  the  people  of  the  neigh- 
boring parishes  had  been  deeply  excited  in  behalf  of  their 
poor  neighbors,  and  hundreds  might  be  seen  wending 
over  the  heights  in  all  directions  in  lines  of  six  or  eight,  — 
some  robust  man  in  each  party  breaking  a  way  through 
the  snow  for  the  rest.  Before  eleven  o'clock  a  crowd  had 
gathered  round  the  church,  sufficient  almost  to  have  filled 
it  twice  over.  There  were  individuals  present  from  Keith, 
from  Pluntly,  from  Banff,  from  Portsoy ;  —  all  the  parishes 
for  miles  round  had  sent  out  their  spectators  ;  and,  assur- 
edly, the  spectacle  which  on  that  occasion  they  witnessed 
will  never  be  effaced  from  their  memories.  Mr.  Edwards 
and  his  friends  arrived  before  noon  ;  and,  after  commencing 
the  business  of  the  day,  with  singular  appropriateness,  by 
breaking  into  the  manse  through  a  window,  they  moved 
on  to  the  church.  In  a  few  seconds  the  building  was 
crowded  almost  to  suffocation.  The  parishioners  ranged 
themselves  in  the  body  of  the  edifice ;  the  strangers  occu- 
pied the  galleries,  and  clustered  in  dense  masses  outside 
the  windows  and  doors;  a  few  Edinburgh  lawyers  were 
seated  in  a  pew  in  the  centre ;  and  —  curiously  enough  — 
the  reporter  of  an  Intrusion  newspaper  in  the  pulpit.  One 
of  the  suspended  clergymen  opened  the  proceedings  by 
prayer ;  and  the  words  took  the  form  of  an  address  to 
Deity,  but  they  were  listened  to  merely  as  the  necessary 
adjuncts  of  an  act  of  outrageous  injustice  and  oppression  ; 
and  yet,  strange  as  it  may  seem,  the  attention  of  the  audi- 
ence proved  all  the  more  deep  in  consequence  of  the 
estimate.  Every  phrase  employed  seemed  to  gather  new 
meaning  from  its  utter  inappropriateness ;  and,  impressed 
through  the  force  of  contrast,  the  dead  commonplaces  of  a 
lifeless  devotion  seemed  starting  into  frightful  activity 
through  the  influence  of  a  spirit  of  possession.  When  the 
form  was  over,  and  the  gentleman  had  sat  down,  an  elder 


THE    OUTRAGE    AT    MARNOCH.  287 

of  the  parish  rose,  and  demanrled  of  hi?ii,  for  himself  and 
his  fellow-parishioners,  by  what  authority  he  and  his  breth- 
ren had  met  there.  Mark  the  reply!  "By  the  authority," 
he  said,  "of  the  National  Church,  and  in  the  name  of  the 
Lord  Jesus  Christ ! "  A  shudder  ran  through  the  meeting. 
It  was  again  demanded  of  the  suspended  clergymen,  on 
the  part  of  the  people,  in  w^hose  name,  and  in  what  ca- 
pacity, they  had  met  there ;  and  the  gentleman  who  had 
opened  by  prayer  reiterated  his  assertion,  and  with  similar 
effect  as  before.  It  w\as  demanded  of  them  whether  their 
appearance  was  sanctioned  by  the  authority  of  the  General 
Assembly,  or  made  in  direct  opposition  to  that  authority ; 
and  the  question  met  with  no  reply.  The  people  declined 
to  sist  themselves  at  the  bar  of  what  they  could  not  regard 
as  a  court  either  civil  or  ecclesiastical,  and  read,  by  their 
agent,  a  solemn  protest  to  that  effect,  in  which,  deprecating 
the  great  w^ickedness  and  tyranny  about  to  be  inflicted 
upon  them,  and  the  gross  mockery  of  justice  and  desecra- 
tion of  religion  which  its  forms  involved,  they  stated  that, 
before  a  competent  and  lawful  presbytery,  they  were  pre- 
pared to  prove  objections  to  the  life,  qualifications,  and 
doctrine  of  the  obnoxious  presentee,  suflicient  not  only  to 
preclude  his  admission  into  the  Church,  but  even  to  justify 
his  deposition  if  previously  admitted.  But  what  weight 
could  be  allowed  to  statements  such  as  these  by  men  whose 
very  appearance  in  that  place  was  a  trespass?  The  protest 
was  read  ;  and  the  people,  gathering  up  their  Bibles  from 
the  pews,  rose  in  a  body,  and  quitted  the  church.  There 
were  old  gray-headed  men  among  them,  who  had  wor- 
shipped within  its  walls  for  more  than  half  a  century, — 
men,  too,  in  the  vigorous  prime  of  manhood,  —  others  just 
entering  on  the  stage  of  active  life.  All  rose,  and  all  went 
away,  —  many  of  them  in  tears.  It  was  the  church  in 
which.  Sabbath  after  Sabbath,  their  fathers  had  met  to 
worship ;  it  had  formed  the  centre  of  many  a  solemn 
association,  many  a  sacred  attraction  ;  and  they  were  now 
quitting  it  forever.     Even  the  "  buyers  and  sellers  in  the 


288  THE    OUTRAGE    AT   MARNOCH. 

house  of  God"  —  the  men  to  whom  persecution  is  business 
—  seemed  awed  and  impressed  for  the  time.  "Will  they 
all  go  ?  "  they  were  heard  to  whisper.  Yes,  all  went ;  the 
pews  were  emptied  from  gable  to  gable.  The  sacred  and 
the  civil  may  be  mixed  up  and  confounded  in  idea  by 
courts  and  individuals ;  but  it  has  been  ordained  by  God 
himself  that  their  natures  should  keep  them  apart.  No 
secular  power  on  earth  can  impose  a  minister  on  a  people. 
The  control  of  judges  and  magistrates  affect,  as  in  this 
remarkable  case,  the  temporalities  only.  The  experiment 
has  been  tried  ;  and  our  readers  may  see  the  case  of  con- 
flicting jurisdictions  virtually  decided  by  the  extent  and 
degree  to  which  the  Court  of  Session  can  give  a  clergyman 
to  the  parishioners  of  Marnoch.  And  it  is  well  to  remem- 
ber that  to  secure  a  result  so  disastrous  —  to  verify  the 
same  ruinous  experiment  on  an  immensely  larger  scale  — 
has  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  been  struggling  to  legislate  for 
the  people  of  Scotland. 

The  pai'ishi oners,  after  quitting  tlie  church,  held  a  brief 
but  impressive  meeting  in  a  hollow  at  the  foot  of  the  hill 
on  which  the  edifice  has  been  erected.  The  day  was  still 
dreary,  and  the  snow  lay  thick  and  white  around  them. 
And  in  that  snowy  hollow,  oppressed  by  a  sense  of  the 
grievous  outrage  to  which  they  had  been  subjected,  but 
more  in  grief  than  in  anger,  they  expressed  their  settled 
determination  never,  by  word  or  act,  to  recognize  as  their 
minister  the  man  to  whom  the  patrimony  of  their  church 
had  been  adjudged,  and  to  adhere  to  one  another  in  all 
their  future  efforts  for  obtaining  redress  of  the  wrong;  and 
then,  separating  in  silence,  they  returned  by  different  routes 
to  their  respective  homes.  The  church  meanwhile  had 
become  a  scene  of  tumult  and  confusion.  The  strangers 
outside  had  rushed  into  the  body  of  the  building  when  the 
parishioners  had  quitted  it,  and  had  begun  to  express  their 
sense  of  the  sacredness  of  the  service  by  shouts  and  hisses, 
and  the  flinging  of  missiles.  Assuredly  the  secular  party 
may  read  their  future  fortunes  in  the  incident,  should  the 


THE    OUTRAGE    AT    MARNOCH.  289 

same  wretched  success  attend  thera  in  the  present  struggle 
on  a  large  scale  that  has  attended  them  in  the  parish  of 
Marnoch.  Miserable,  in  such  an  event,  would  their  fate 
prove :  the  surges  of  popular  indignation  would  rise  and 
overwhelm  thera ;  and  who,  among  the  millions  of  the  em- 
pire, would  raise  an  arm  in  their  defence?  A  magistrate 
entered  the  church  in  the  midst  of  the  tumult,  —  a  man 
much  respected  in  the  district, —  and  succeeded  in  restoring 
order.  He  had  no  sympathy  with  the  representatives  of 
the  civil  court  in  the  profanation  in  which  they  were  en- 
gaged. No  one  could  be  more  hostile  to  the  settlement  of 
Edwards ;  and  hence,  in  no  small  degree,  through  his  influ- 
ence with  the  people  on  that  account,  his  ability  of  protect- 
ing the  miserable  objects  of  their  hatred  and  contempt. 
An  incident  at  this  stage  brought  out  very  strikingly  how 
entirely  the  parishioners  had  left  the  church.  An  individ- 
ual present  complained  to  the  magistrate,  who  is  himself  a 
parishioner,  that  the  Marnoch  people  had  taken  as  active  a 
part  in  the  riot  as  any  of  the  rest.  He  was  asked,  in  turn, 
where  these  Marnoch  people  were,  and  succeeded  in  point- 
ing out  a  young  man  in  one  of  the  galleries,  —  the  only 
parishioner  present, —  who  stated,  when  questioned,  that  he 
had  taken  no  part  whatever  in  the  disturbance,  and  was 
only  there  because  he  could  not  get  out  through  the  crowd. 
There  was  a  passage  immediately  cleared  for  him;  and 
thus,  ere  the  actual  work  of  intrusion  began,  the  last  parish- 
ioner present  was  enabled  to  leave  the  church. 

In  these  circumstances  the  ordination  proceeded.  The 
bellman  of  a  neighboring  parish  ofiiciated  as  precentor; 
there  were  prayers  repeated,  in  wdiich  God  was  named, 
that  the  stipend  of  Marnoch  might  be  appropriated  to  the 
support  of  Edwards ;  and  the  preacher  argued,  in  his  dis- 
course, that  the  men  through  whose  agency  he  was  thrust 
upon  the  people  should  be  accounted  ministers  of  Christ ! 
Never,  surely,  on  any  former  occasion,  did  arguments  tell 
w^ith  more  wretched  cifect.  Ministers  of  Christ!  It  was 
unnecessary  to  ask   from  whom    they  had    derived    their 

25 


290  THE    OUTRAGE    AT   MARNOCH. 

authority ;  the  business  of  the  day  read  a  too  unequivocal 
comment  on  the  question,  and  answered  it  too  surely.  Mr. 
Edwards  stood  up  in  that  crowded  assembly.  He  declared, 
with  all  the  solemnity  of  an  oath,  that  he  would  subject 
himself  to  the  superior  judicatories  of  the  Church,  and 
seek  earnestly  to  maintain  her  unity  and  peace,  wdiatsoever 
troubles  or  persecutions  might  arise.  He  affirmed,  in  the 
hearing  of  all,  that  zeal  for  the  honor  of  God,  love  to  Jesus 
Christ,  and  desire  of  saving  souls,  had  been  his  great 
motives  and  chief  inducements  to  enter  into  the  functions 
of  the  holy  ministry,  and  not  w^orldly  designs  or  interests 
of  any  kind.  He  asserted  that  he  had  used  no  undue  meth- 
ods, either  of  himself  or  through  others,  in  procuring  his 
call  to  the  parish.  What  call?  He  promised,  too,  that, 
through  Divine  grace,  he  would  perform  among  the  people 
all  the  duties  of  a  faithful  minister  of  the  gospel.  Every 
eye  was  turned  upon  him,  and  there  was  no  longer  any  dis- 
position evinced  to  hiss  or  hoot.  Even  the  more  volatile 
portion  of  the  audience  w^ere  tamed  into  sobriety  and  seri- 
ousness for  the  time.  A  deep  shudder  again  ran  through  the 
assembly.  The  mummery  proceeded.  There  were  hands 
laid  upon  his  head ;  and  he  became  a  minister  of  Christ  in 
the  sense  understood  by  the  men  through  whom  his  voca- 
tion was  conferred.  It  is  customary  for  an  acceptable  min- 
ister on  such  occasions  to  receive  the  hearty  welcome  of 
his  people  at  one  of  the  doors  of  the  church.  But  no  such 
welcome  awaited  on  Mr.  Edwards.  Mr.  Peterkin,  of  Edin- 
burgh, the  legal  agent  of  the  suspended  clergy,  wished  him 
much  joy  ;  Mr.  Robertson,  of  the  Aberdeen  Constitutional, 
and  Mr.  Adam,  of  the  Aberdeen  Herald,  shook  hands  with 
him  as  they  hurried  past  to  assert  the  popularity  of  Intru- 
sion;  a  captain  of  police  in  attendance  took  his  arm  to 
escort  him  through  the  crowd ;  and,  as  he  turned  his  back 
on  the  desecrated  edifice,  the  assembled  hundreds  hissed 
him  from  the  door.  And  such  are  the  more  striking  partic- 
ulars of  an  event  destined  to  occupy  a  prominent  place  in 
the  history  of  the  Church  of  Scotland. 


THE    OUTRAGE    AT    MARNOCH.  291 

It  is  unnecessary  to  offer  a  single  remark  on  the  subject. 
'Tlie  lessons  which  it  inculcates  almost  everyone  may  read. 
Religion  is  the  business  of  time  for  eternity;  and  without 
an  all-pervading  conviction  of  its  importance,  and  a  deep- 
seated  belief  in  the  reality  of  its  objects,  life  passes  un- 
blessed by  its  influences,  and  death  comes  uncheered  by  its 
hopes.  It  comprises  the  arts  of  living  well  and  of  dying 
safely;  and  it  lives  and  breathes  in  an  element  of  faith. 
But  not  only  must  there  be  an  all-pervading  belief  in  its 
objects,  but  also  in  the  honesty,  sincerity,  spirituality  of  its 
messengers.  They  must  be  regarded  as  sent ;  and  it  is  with 
this  vital  element  of  belief  that  the  civil  or  the  secular 
cannot  interfere.  Where  is  there  a  power  on  earth  that 
can  inspire  the  people  of  Marnoch  with  confidence  in  the 
character  of  the  man  wlio  must  henceforth  walk  in  shame 
and  dishonor  among  them,  and  bear,  as  if  in  scorn,  the 
name  of  their  pastor  ?  Through  what  form  or  process  are 
the  dying  to  be  led  to  long  for  his  presence  at  their  bed- 
sides, or  to  wish  for  an  interest  in  his  prayers  ?  Through 
what  influences  are  men  awakened  to  anxiety  for  their 
spiritual  state  to  be  brought  to  ask  counsel  or  guidance  of 
him?  Can  the  civil  court  stretch  out  its  arm  in  the  mat- 
ter, and  be  as  God  between  this  man  and  the  people  ?  It 
has  already  done  its  utmost,  and  the  deplorable  scene  of 
Thursday  last  has  been  the  result.  The  country,  we  reit- 
erate, may  see  in  the  case  of  Marnoch  the  true  power  of 
the  Court  of  Session  in  the  spiritual  field.  It  may  see, 
besides,  the  fate  which  awaits  the  Christian  people  and  the 
National  Church,  if  the  secular  element  prevail  in  this 
eventful  and  surely  most  important  struggle. 


292  SUPPLEMENTARY   NOTES    OF   THE 


SUPPLEMENTAEY    NOTES     OF    THE     SETTLEMENT    AT 
MARNOCH. 

Chesterfield  has  exemplified  his  ideas  of  indecency 
somewhat  whimsically,  by  remarking  that,  though  there 
may  be  nothing  improper  in  dancing  in  a  ball-room,  it 
would  be  decidedly  indecent  to  dance  at  church.  He  was 
in  the  right  at  least  in  referring  to  the  church  for  the  illus- 
tration. What  would  pass  without  remark  in  a  place  less 
solemn  becomes  coarse  and  indecent  there.  What  would 
be  simply  business  in  a  lawyer's  office  strikes  as  a  gross 
impertinence  in  the  house  of  prayer  ;  and  an  air  which 
might  grace  the  jockeyism  of  Newmarket,  would  shock, 
when  exhibited  in  the  pulpit  or  the  elder's  pew,  as  impious 
and  i^rofane.  The  appearance  of  some  of  the  suspended 
clergymen  on  the  morning  of  the  settlement  seems  to  have 
happily  exemplified  the  remark  of  Chesterfield.  None  of 
our  readers  can  have  forgotten  the  striking  picture  drawn 
by  Chalmers  of  the  "  coarse  and  contemptuous  clergymen, 
booted  and  spurred  for  riding  commissions,"  who  assisted 
in  perpetrating  the  forced  settlements  of  the  last  century, 
—  men  now  gone  down  to  dishonored  graves,  whose  mem- 
ories rot  unburied  in  the  recollection  of  the  country,  and 
whom  even  their  successors  in  principle  and  policy  deem 
it  prudent  to  denounce  and  disown.  Archbishop  Beaton 
in  his  steel  harness  was  comparatively  respectable  :  he  was 
a  bold,  though  not  an  honest  man.  The  booted  and 
spurred  clergymen  drawn  by  Chalmers  were  as  despicable 
as  they  were  wicked.  Now,  it  is  curious  to  observe  how 
closely  the  perpetrators  of  the  forced  settlement  at  Mar- 
noch  resembled,  in  externals  at  least,  the  abettors  of  forced 
settlements  in  the  last  age.  They  entered  the  church 
apparently  in  high  spirits,  —  one  dangling  a  thick,  short 
riding-whip,  another  sporting  a  stout  stick,  excellently  tit- 
ted  for  a  market  brawl.     All  had  the  air  of  men  wonder- 


SETTLEMENT    AT   MARNOCH,  293 

fully  well  pleased,  and  quite  aware  tliat  they  were  on  the 
eve  of  doing  something  clever.  Whips  and  sticks  were 
laid  on  the  pew  before  them,  intermixed  in  grotesque  con- 
fusion with  sparsely  written  documents  tied  up  in  tape  — 
decisions  of  court  and  opinions  of  counsel.  Bibles  some- 
how they  seemed  to  have  forgotten,  or,  perhaps,  rather  left 
designedl}^  behind  them,  as  mere  bundles  of  exj^arte  docu- 
ments on  the  other  side.  And  there  they  sat,  all  looking 
smart,  and  waiting  very  knowingly  till  the  people  should 
sist  themselves  at  their  bar.  Among  them  was  Mr.  Ed- 
wards, encircled  by  gentlemen  of  the  law  who  hold  by  the 
theology  of  the  Court  of  Session,  and  kindly  regarded, 
too,  by  gentlemen  of  the  j^ress  chiefly  remarkable  for 
holding  by  no  theology  at  alk  Like  the  young  man  sent  by 
the  sons  of  Eli  with  a  flesh-fork  to  desecrate  the  sacrifice 
of  the  people,  and  to  make  men  "  abhor  the  oflering  of  the 
Lord,"  he  had  come  to  take  by  force  what  without  force  the 
people  would  never  have  yielded  him.  The  business  of  the 
morning  went  on.  During  the  reading  of  the  solemn  and 
well-judged  protest  of  the  congregation,  there  were  nods, 
and  winks,  and  half-suppressed  chuckles,  among  the  party. 
The  joke  was  by  no  means  apparent.  A  man  thoroughly 
convinced  that  the  hundreds  around  him  had  all  been  born 
to  immortality,  and  had  all  souls  to  be  lost  or  saved,  could 
hardly  afford  being  merry  on  any  such  occasion  ;  but  it 
was  certainly  no  conviction  of  the  importance  of  man's 
destiny  that  had  brought  the  party  there.  As  for  the 
joke,  all  our  readers  know  that  to  occupy  the  chair  of  the 
scorner  requires  neither  the  perception  of  wit  nor  the 
l^eculiar  inventive  power  in  which  wit  originates.  Men  of 
wonderfully  little  sense  or  humor  can  sneer  and  make 
merry  at  whatever  involves  eternal  interests,  or  concerns 
the  cause  of  God. 

Their  merriment,  however,  received  a  check.  A  man 
may  repeat  a  lie,  it  has  been  said,  until  at  last  he  actually 
brings  himself  to  believe  it.  Now,  among  the  Intrusion- 
ists  present  there  were   not  a  few  who  had  done  more  in 

25* 


294  SUPPLEMENTARY   NOTES    OF   THE 

the  cause  than  barely  work  for  their  fee  by  drawing  up 
jjapers  and  making  speeches,  —  men  who  had  busied  them- 
selves, into  the  bargain,  in  asserting  in  newspapers  and 
magazines  the  popularity  of  their  principles,  and  that  the 
movement  in  the  country  was  confined  almost  exclusively 
to  a  few  clerical  agitators.  When,  however,  the  people 
rose  and  left  the  church  in  a  body,  they  were  undeceived, 
and  looked  somewhat  crest-fallen.  Mr.  Peterkin  found 
that  the  author  who  writes  Columns  for  the  Kirk  in  the 
Observer  had  deceived  him.  Another  legal  gentleman 
present  began  to  discover  that  he  had  been  not  a  little 
misled  by  the  statements  in  "Blackwood."  The  people 
are  of  some  importance,  after  all ;  and  we  question  whether 
a  thousand  Court-of-Session  Mr.  Edwardses,  in  the  thou- 
sand manses  of  Scotland,  would  compose  a  Church  that 
would  come  quite  up  to  the  idea  of  even  the  Lord  President, 
or  whether  he  would  deem  the  body  and  members  in  such 
a  case  more  than  worthy  of  their  secular  and  only  head. 
The  people  all  went  away :  the  Intrusionists  remained 
behind,  chop-fallen  and  blank.  The  fate  of  the  Earl  of 
Aberdeen's  intended  measure  was  sealed  by  that  act.  His 
lordship  has  read  it  aright.  It  has  taught  him  that  there 
are  things  which  lie  beyond  the  rench  of  diplomacy;  that 
he  has  misrepresented  and  calumniated  the  best  and  most 
revered  men  of  his  country  to  little  purpose ;  and  that  it 
is  one  thing  to  lend  a  diminished  and  still  sinking  influence 
to  the  party  under  whose  sway  religion  has  ever  sickened 
and  pined  away,  and  quite  another  to  legislate  for  the  peo- 
ple of  Scotland.  Tlie  tumvdt  began,  and  the  fears  of  the 
Intrusionists  seem  to  have  been  very  marked  and  very 
edifying.  The  disturbers  are  represented  as  merely  a  few 
thoughtless  lads  in  the  gallery,  who  took,  unwarrantably 
enough,  to  the  flinging  of  snow-pellets  and  the  making  of 
noises.  Men  of  fortitude  have  borne  as  much  without 
wincing;  and  the  men  of  the  court  had  brought  both 
wln])s  and  sticks  with  them,  on  the  principle,  apparently, 
that  made  the  Copper  Captain  gird  himself  with   a  long 


SETTLEMENT   AT   MARNOCH.  295 

sword ;  bat,  too  meek  to  fight,  and  not  quite  prepared  for 
martyrdom,  they  sat  cowermg  and  shivering  in  the  pew, 
staring  at  one  another  with  pale  and  piteous  faces,  miser- 
ably afraid  to  remain  where  they  were,  but  by  far  too 
frightened  to  rise  and  go  away.  The  missiles  flew  thick 
and  fast.  The  editor  of  the  Constitutional  seems  to  have 
taken  a  snowball,  in  his  imminent  terror,  for  a  piece  of 
flying  seat;  and  a  bit  of  a  wandering  cigar,  which,  if  it 
came  lighted,  must  have  very  much  resembled  a  bomb- 
shell, seems  to  have  struck  utter  astonishment  to  the  inmost 
soul  of  the  editor  of  the  Herald.  Both  gentlemen,  with 
the  rest  of  the  party,  doubtless  wished  themselves  at  home. 
The  noises  continued,  enlivened  by  an  occasional  snow- 
ball; business  stuck  fast,- — so  did  the  Intrusionists  ;  and, 
as  the  afternoon  began  to  close  in,  a  shade  of  deeper  anxi- 
ety and  terror  lengthened  their  faces,  as  they  surmised 
the  possibility  of  being  left  in  the  dark  to  the  tender  mer- 
cies of  the  urchins  in  the  gallery.  We  are  no  advocates 
of  violence  or  outrage;  but  we  justify  neither  when  we 
remark,  that  the  party  may  estimate  the  weight  of  their 
religious  character,  and  the  degree  of  moral  force  which 
they  possess,  from  this  event.  They  but  experienced  the 
reflex  influence  of  their  own  character  coming  back  to 
them  from  the  people.  Our  former  remarks  on  this  part 
of  the  subject  have,  we  are  happy  to  find,  given  great 
oflence  to  the  Aberdeen  Herald^  which  has  produced  an 
article  on  the  subject,  chiefly  remarkable  —  and  we  are 
serious  when  we  say  so  —  for  the  editor  thanking  God. 
Johnson  expressed  his  pleasure  on  one  occasion  that  his 
publisher  should  have  grace  enough  to  thank  God  for  any- 
thing. We  are  far  from  sure  in  this  case,  however,  that 
the  unhappy  northern  editor,  instead  of  breathing  a  prayer, 
is  not  mouthing  an  oath. 

To  proceed.  Hope  was  well-nigh  gone  from  the  party, 
when  a  magistrate  and  an  oflicer  of  police  appeared.  The 
snowballs  and  the  noises  ceased.  Mr.  Walker,  of  Huntly, 
who  had  borne  up  wonderfully  in  the  time  of  terror,  grew 


296  SUPPLEMENTARY   NOTES   OF   THE 

nervous  at  the  sudden  reverse ;  and  forgetting,  in  his  con- 
fusion of  idea,  that  he  was  the  Court  of  Session's  minister, 
began  to  issue  orders  to  the  magistrate,  instead  of  waiting 
to  receive  orders  from  him.  His  advisers,  however,  soon 
set  him  right.  The  magistrate,  well  knowing  his  place 
and  his  new  powers,  dictated  to  the  officiating  clergyman 
the  length  of  his  sermon  ;  and  he  also,  knowing  his  place, 
made  it  as  short  as  he  was  bidden.  There  were  some  very 
remarkable  passages  in  the  discourse.  It  was  seriously 
stated  by  the  clergyman  that  the  obnoxious  presentee  had 
"long  set  his  heart  on  becoming  minister  of  the  parish; 
that  the  firmness  with  which  he  had  pursued  his  object 
plainly  showed  Jiim  to  be  a  man  who  could  be  daunted  by 
no  common  difficulties,  or  turned  aside  by  no  considera- 
tions of  labor  or  anxiety;"  and  that  the  "same  firmness, 
perseverance,  and  zeal,"  which  in  this  instance  had  ren- 
dered his  aim  successful,  would  now  be  directed  in  fur- 
thering, through  extraordinary  exertion,  the  spiritual  inter- 
ests of  the  people.  It  must  be  confessed  the  argument  is 
singularly  wide  in  its  scope.  If  there  be  aught  of  solidity 
in  it,  then  has  the  Church  most  to  hope  from  her  bitterest, 
keenest,  most  inveterate  enemies.  What  may  not  Chris- 
tianity owe  to  the  activity  of  Robert  Owen,  or  the  zeal  of 
the  Jesuits?  There  must  have  been  much  of  good  to 
expect,  on  this  principle,  from  the  infidelity  which  in 
Paine,  Hume,  and  Voltaire,  so  powerfully  assailed  religion 
with  the  pen.  There  must  have  been  as  much  to  expect 
from  the  Bonners,  Beatons,  Claverhouses,  that  pursued  her 
with  fire  and  the  sword.  Nay,  if  we  are  to  ground  our 
hopes  exclusively  on  qualities  such  as  firmness,  persever- 
ance, activity,  and  zeal,  without  taking  into  account  the 
objects  which  they  are  exerted  to  secure,  where  shall  we 
find  created  being  more  hopeful  than  that  terrible  Spirit 
of  untiring  energy,  who,  devoid  of  hope,  defeated,  miser- 
able, and  open  to  the  eye  of  Omnipotence,  never  once 
slacks  in  his  zeal  or  relinquishes  his  purpose  ?  Another 
passage   of  the  gentleman's   discourse  was  more  striking 


SETTLEMENT   AT   MARNOCH.  297 

Still.  He  alluded  to  the  guilt  of  pastors  who  warn  not  the 
people.  "  The  minister,"  he  said,  "  who  neglecteth  to  do 
this  is  not  the  people's  pastor,  but  a  hireling^  loho  careth 
not  for  the  flock,  but  for  the  loages,  —  icho  scatters  the 
flock,  and  drives  them  aioay  from  the  fold ;  and  great  is 
his  guilt,  and  great  will  be  his  condemnation.  He  is  an 
unjust  steward;  and  woe  will  be  to  such  a  pastor."  What 
wonder  that  the  audience  should  have  shuddered  to  hear 
truths  so  solemn  delivered  in  circumstances  that  read  upon 
them  so  striking  a  comment !  The  preacher  finished  his 
discourse ;  and,  coming  down  from  the  pulpit,  heard  Mr. 
Edwards  take  upon  him  vows  of  equal  solemnity,  and  then 
constituted  him  minister  to  Peter  Taylor  of  Foggie-loan. 

The  i^arish  of  Marnoch  is  one  of  the  most  populous 
country  parishes  in  the  north  of  Scotland.  The  parish- 
ioners are  a  sober  and  industrious  race  of  people,  who  have 
hitherto  led  quiet  and  peaceable  lives,  undisturbed  by 
political  agitation.  But  they  are  far  from  being  an  igno- 
rant or  unintelligent  race.  They  partake  largely,  on  the 
contrary,  in  the  characteristic  shrewdness  of  their  better 
countrymen,  and  share  deeply  in  the  old  Scottish  predilec- 
tion for  theological  study.  Of  one  theological  work  no 
fewer  than  sixty  copies  have  been  sold  in  the  parish  ;  a 
Sabbath-school  library,  lately  established  among  them, 
already  contains  two  hundred  and  fifty  volumes  ;  and  so 
deeply  are  they  interested  in  the  cause  of  the  Church,  that 
petitions  in  her  behalf,  asserting  her  spiritual  independence, 
have  received  five  hundred  sio^natures  amon^  them  in  the 
course  of  a  single  day.  There  are  men  in  the  parish  who 
have  missed  scarce  a  meeting  of  presbytery  or  synod  since 
the  ^proceedings  which  have  obtruded  Edwards  upon  them 
began,  —  one  tradesman,  in  particular,  whose  interest  in 
the  case  had  led  him  to  travel,  mostly  on  foot,  from  church 
court  to  church  court,  not  less  than  a  thousand  miles. 
And  these  people,  under  the  reign  of  Moderatism,  Avould 
have  been  lost  to  the  Church.  But  we  live  in  a  better 
time.     The  guilt  and  folly  of  forced  settlements  attach  no 


298       SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF   1841. 

longer  to  onr  ecclesiastical  courts.  The  minion  of  the 
Court  of  Session  may  fatten  on  the  tem}3oralities  of  Mur- 
noch,  but  he  forms  no  part  of  the  Church  of  Scotland.  It 
is  he,  not  the  people,  who  is  severed  from  her  communion. 


SKETCHES    OF   THE   GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF   1841. 
PART    FIRST. OPENING    OF    THE    ASSEMBLY. 

The  General  Assembly  of  tlie  Church  commenced  its 
sittings  on  Thursday  last.  Perhaps  on  no  former  occasion 
was  the  j^reliminary  pageant  marked  by  a  degree  of  splen- 
dor equally  great.  Royalty  put  on  all  its  robes  in  the 
person  of  its  representative,  and  summoned  together  all 
its  attendants.  The  civic  magistrate  was  there  with  his 
mace,  the  soldier  with  his  sword ;  there  was  much  sliow 
and  glitter,  —  pages,  and  lackeys,  and  guards,  and  along 
line  of  coaches,  —  antique  insignia,  that  the  same  mental 
fjiculty  to  which  we  owe  the  metaphor  and  the  allegory 
had  devised  ages  ago,  to  symbolize  the  functions  and 
authority  of  office ,'  robes  and  liveries  of  uncouth  si)lendor, 
—  heirlooms  of  the  same  early  period,  and  whose  fantastic 
gayety,  like  the  richly-tinted  lichens  of  some  ancient 
obelisk  or  mighty  oak,  seemed  indicative  of  the  vast  an- 
tiquity of  the  institutions  to  which  they  had  so  long  been 
attached ;  above  all,  immense  multitudes  of  spectators 
thronging  the  streets  far  as  the  eye  could  reach,  and  whicli, 
forming  of  themselves  by  far  the  most  imposing  part  of 
the  spectacle,  served  also  to  show  that  the  love  of  such 
pageantries  lies  all  too  firmly  imbedded  in  man's  nature  for 
the  utilitarian  or  the  economist  to  dislodge  or  eradicate. 
Such  were  the  components  of  the  pageant;  and  the  nat- 
ural effect  of  the  whole  was  to  lead  men's  minds  into  the 
past.  It  was  scarce  possible  to  cast  the  eye  along  the 
glittering  lines  of  bayonets  stretching  away  in  long  per- 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY    OF    1811.       299 

spective,  or  to  mark  the  flashing  sabres  of  the  dragoons, 
Avitliont  calling  to  recollection  that  both  had  been  far 
differently  employed  for  more  than  a  centur}',  and  that 
Presbyterianisni  is  now  the  established  religion  of  Scot- 
land, not  because  the  state  preferred  it,  but  because,  in 
o[)position  to  kings  and  courts,  backed  by  the  civil  magis- 
trate and  the  military,  the  people  preferred  it,  and  held  by 
it  in  distress  and  persecution,  until  at  length,  in  the  good 
providence  of  God,  the  oppressors  were  removed  from 
their  high  places,  to  Avear  out  life  in  beggary  and  exile, 
and  what  was  so  emphatically  the  national  religion  became 
])erforce  the  recognized  religion  of  the  state.  The  mind 
wandered  from  the  pageant  of  Thursday,  with  Till  its  liveried 
pomp  and  solemn  glitter,  to  a  scene  of  lonely  heaths,  where, 
amid  the  graves  of  their  slaughtered  kindred,  a  persecuted 
people  worshipped  God  agreeably  to  the  dictates  of  con- 
science enlightened  by  his  word,  and  where  the  mountain 
echoes,  ever  and  anon  awakened  by  shouts  of  mingled 
rage  and  exultation,  or  the  patter  of  the  deadly  musket, 
told  too  surely  that  the  murderous  men-hunters  were 
abroad. 

The  tone  of  the  Assembly,  as  indicated  by  its  first  meet- 
ing, gave  evidence  that  the  privileges  purchased  at  so 
mighty  a  cost  by  the  ancestors  will  not  readily  be  relin- 
quished by  their  descendants.  It  is  difficult  to  catch  the 
traits  of  expression  —  if  we  may  so  speak  —  of  a  great 
assemblage  animated  by  some  powerful  feeling.  The  pre- 
liminary pageant  outside,  like  the  fringe  or  tlie  foldings  of 
a  robe,  presented  a  comparatively  easy  subject  for  the 
pencil;  one  could  have  cut  a  model  of  it  out  of  tin  or 
])asteboard.  The  expression  of  the  meeting  within  — 
]-esembling  rather  the  features  animated  by  the  mind  — 
can  be  less  adequately  described.  Nothing,  however,  could 
be  more  obvious  than  what  the  expression  conveyed.  It 
bore,  in  all  its  traits,  the  stamp  of  earnestness  and  deep 
interest.  The  densely  occupied  galleries,  with  their  "over- 
bellying  crowds,"  and  where  scarce  an  additional  spectator 


coo      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1811. 

could  have  found  standing-room;  the  fixity  of  posture, 
with  the  general  movement  at  every  pause,  both  so  indica- 
tive of  fixity  of  attention;  the  universal  "hush,  hush," 
when  the  slightest  noise  in  some  over-crowded  corner 
threatened  to  rob  the  audience  of  but  a  fraguient  of  the 
debate ;  the  oneness  of  direction  in  every  face ;  the 
forward  attitude;  the  hand  raised  to  the  ear,  —  all  served 
to  show  how  thoroughly  men  are  beginning  to  appreciate 
the  importance  of  our  great  ecclesiastical  struggle.  The 
well-filled  area,  too,  thronged  at  so  early  a  stage  by  well- 
nigh  all  the  members  of  Assembly ;  the  jealous  and 
watchful  care  evinced  at  every  step  of  the  proceedings, 
lest  a  single  hair's  breadth  should  be  inadvertently  yielded 
np;  the  uncompromising  character  of  the  majority,  grow- 
ing in  numbers  and  stern  resolution  as  the  opposition  in 
high  places  thickens  and  darkens  over  them ;  the  excite- 
ment, increasing  as  the  debate  proceeds,  until  at  length  the 
interest  grows  all  too  painful,  and  the  hour  of  dismissal 
comes  as  a  felt  relief  to  even  the  most  eager,  —  such  were 
some  of  the  more  strongly-marked  circumstances  indicative 
of  the  temper  of  the  Assembly,  and  by  far  too  prominent 
to  escape  the  notice  of  even  the  least  observant.  It  is  a 
significant  fact  that,  in  its  first  vote, — a  vote  involving 
the  main  principles  of  the  contest  in  their  most  prac- 
tical form,  —  the  Assembly  should  have  declared  its  de- 
termined adherence  to  its  principles  by  a  majority  of  two 
hundred  and  fifteen  to  a  minority  of  eighty-five;  for  such, 
in  the  division  pressed  on  Thursday,  has  been  the  over- 
pow^ering  majority  against  the  motion  of  Dr.  Cook  that 
the  commissions  from  what  he  termed  the  minority  of 
the  Presbytery  of  Strathbogie  should  not  be  received. 
We  may  remark  in  the  passing  that  the  negative  character 
of  his  motion  —  the  unwillingness  it  implied  of  presenting 
in  a  positive  form  the  claims  of  the  deposed  —  is  not 
without  its  meaning.  When  the  wild  beast  droops  the 
eye  it  meditates  a  retreat ;  and  there  is  evidently  a 
drooping  of  the  eye  here.     The  intense  interest  felt  in  the 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1811.       301 

proceedings  of  this  Assembly  —  an  interest  which,  for  the 
present  at  least,  seems  to  swallow  up  the  consideration  of 
all  other  concerns  —  bears  reference,  doubtless,  to  the 
important  striiggle  in  which  the  Chnrch  is  engaged,  and 
on  the  issue  of  which  so  much  depends ;  but  we  cannot 
aA'oid  the  conclusion  that  there  is  another  important  cause 
in  operation.  The  skeleton  Assemblies  of  half  a  century 
ago  —  Assemblies  composed  of  mere  handfuls  of  members, 
and  which  but  half  excited  the  half-fledged  curiosity  of  a 
few  listless  idlers,  who  came  to  yawn  in  the  galleries,  or 
to  mark  peculiarities  of  elocution  or  diversities  of  style  — 
owed  their  unpopularity,  not  exclusively  to  the  essentially 
unpopular  character  of  Moderatism,  but  also  to  the  skepti- 
cism of  the  age.  A  wide-spread  indiflerency  aflected  all 
the  churches  of  Europe.  The  desires  and  wishes  of  men 
restricted  to  the  present  scene  of  things  expatiated  so  ex- 
clusively in  the  political  field,  —  a  miserable  Eden,  surely, 
possessed  of  no  tree  of  life,  and  into  which  death  and  sin 
had  entered,  —  that  they  sought  none  other;  and,  save  to 
a  chosen  few,  those  hopes  which,  founding  on  the  immor- 
tality of  the  soul  and  the  revealed  w^ill  of  God,  look  far 
into  the  future,  seemed  mere  hallucinations  of  a  past  state 
of  things,  whose  unsolid  character  the  intelligence  of  a 
l^ractical  age  had  at  length  succeeded  in  demonstrating. 
The  case  seems  difiierent  now.  The  reaction  in  favor  of 
belief  has  begun  powerfully  to  operate  in  both  false  and 
•true  churches.  Popery  is  evidently  rising.  Protestantism 
seems  fast  quitting  the  neutral  ground  it  had  so  long 
occupied,  by  two  opposite  outlets,  and  aggregating  its 
divided  forces  on  opposite  sides,  —  here  advancing  towards 
its  original  type,  there  precipitating  itself  full  on  Rome. 
The  felt  reference  to  the  spiritual  nature  and  future  state 
of  man  exerts,  as  of  old,  its  influence  on  human  aflliirs. 
Ecclesiastical  questions  promise  to  be  no  longer  subordi- 
nate to  merely  political  ones;  and  the  General  Assembly 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland  is  felt,  in  consequence  of  this 
change,   even   by  worldly   men,   to   represent   one   of  the 

26 


302   SKETCHES  OF  THE  GENERAL  ASSEMELY  OF  18H. 

greatest  interests  of  the  kingdom.  It  is  only  fifteen  years 
since  Canning,  in  his  place  in  Parliament,  predicted  that 
the  first  war  in  Europe  would  be  a  war  of  opinion.  It 
was  of  political  opinion  he  spoke.  He  had  watched  the 
accumulation,  and  marked  the  evident  direction,  of  that 
power  which  has  since  produced  the  revolutions  of  France 
and  Belgium,  and  extended  the  franchise  over  Britain  and 
Ireland.  But  the  present  is,  above  all  others,  a  time  of 
sudden  chansce.  The  tide  whose  rise  he  marked  has  since 
fallen,  leaving  no  inconsiderable  mass  of  impurity  and 
corruption  behind  it;  and  the  current  is  now  setting  in 
full  in  an  opposite  direction.  The  political  war  is  past, 
and  the  next  great  confiict  of  the  world  will  be  in  all 
probability  a  conflict,  not  of  secular,  but  of  religious 
opinion. 

It  would  be  well  to  be  prepared  for  it.  There  is  no  class 
of  arguments  which  worldly  men  set  aside  with  a  feeling  so 
ineffably  contemptuous  as  the  class  derived  from  prophecy. 
There  has  been,  no  doubt,  abuse  in  this  province,  as  in  all 
others ;  but  it  is  the  only  province  in  which  the  sober  and 
proper  use  has  been  denied  in  consequence.  We  shall  ven- 
ture to  refer  to  it,  notwithstanding  the  virtual  prohibition. 
Many  of  our  more  judicious  interpreters  of  prophecy  are 
much  in  error  if  the  Church  be  not  entering,  in  the  present 
time,  on  a  period  of  protracted  conflict,  in  which,  though 
she  may  have  to  long  often  and  vehemently  for  peace  as  a 
blessing,  she  shall  have  to  contend  for  the  right  as  a  duty ; 
nay,  to  struggle,  perchance,  for  very  existence.  If  sucli 
is  to  be  the  event,  it  would  be  surely  well  for  "him  that 
believeth  not  to  make  haste."  If  there  is  to  be  no  "  dis- 
charge in  this  war,"  let  us  look  well  to  the  posts  in  which 
the  providence  of  God  has  placed  us,  and  exert  ourselves, 
in  his  strength,  that  they  be  maintained.  Let  us  not  desert 
them.  Better  to  be  in  his  battle  thnn  in  quiet  elsewhere. 
The  evening  will  at  length  come,  and  we  shall  lay  us  down 
and  be  at  rest.  It  is  scarce  possible  to  take  a  cool  survey 
of  the  various  stages  of  the  present  conflict,  without  being 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OE    1841.       803 

struck  by  a  remarkable  peculiarity  in  its  character.  Cow- 
ley, in  one  of  his  graver  pindarics, —  "The  Ode  to  Destiny," 
—  describes  a  game  of  chess,  in  which  the  various  figures 
seem  to  move  of  themselves  along  the  board,  with  appar- 
ently no  hand  to  guide  them.  He  sees  skilful  and  unlucky 
moves.  A  pawn  rises  to  the  top,  and  "  becomes  another 
thing  and  name."  A  knight,  "  that  does  bold  wonders  in 
the  fray,"  amazes  him  with  its  success.  He  approves  the 
gaining,  censures  the  losing  party,  —  admires  their  better 
moves,  condemns  the  false  and  unfortunate  ones.  But  the 
moves  are  not  theirs.  He  raises  his  eyes  from  the  board, 
and  sees  two  shadowy  figures  bending  over  it,  and  propell- 
ing the  pieces  along  the  squares.  And  such,  he  exclaims, 
is  the  game  of  life. 

"  With  man,  alas !  no  otherwise  it  proves,  — 
An  unseen  hand  malces  all  the  moves : 
And  some  are  great,  and  some  are  small, 
Some  climb  to  good,  some  from  good  fortune  fall; 
Some  wise  men,  and  some  fools,  we  call,  — 
Figures,  alas !  of  speech,  for  Destiny  plays  us  all." 

Destiny  is  not  the  word  :  the  Scriptures,  and,  from  these, 
the  Confessions  and  Catechisms  of  our  Church,  furnish  us 
with  a  better.  With  this  emendation,  however,  we  have 
been  often  reminded  of  Cowley's  seemingly  extravagant 
fiction,  during  the  course  of  the  present  controversy.  "An 
unseen  hand  makes  all  the  moves."  The  game  has  got 
very  palpably  beyond  human  management.  But  the  event 
is  in  the  hands  of  God.  We  cannot  see  it;  we  cannot  see 
even  the  nearer  moves;  we  can  see  only  our  duty.  We 
can  but  see  that  in  this  quarrel  we  must  assert  the  Head- 
ship of  Christ  and  the  rights  of  his  people.  And  certainly, 
though  the  shore  be  dim  and  distant,  the  compass  is  true. 


304      SKETCHES   OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF   1841. 


PART    SECOND. THE    MODERATES. 

We  attempted  in  our  last  a  brief — we  are  afraid  rather 
inadequate  —  descri^^tion  of  the  opening  ceremonies  of  the 
General  Assembly,  and  the  aspect  of  its  first  meeting. 
There  are  few  things  more  tiresome  than  a  speech  from 
some  nameless  member  at  the  close  of  a  long  debate,  in 
which  the  superior  men  of  the  meeting  or  Assembly  have 
already  taken  part,  and  of  which  the  important  and  leading 
points  have  been  fairly  exhausted.  And  as  articles  on  the 
merits  of  the  questions  discussed  might  seem,  in  connec- 
tion with  the  very  ample  report  given  in  our  paper,  but 
mere  supernumerary  speeches,  —  speeches  of  the  kind 
which  exercise,  not  the  judgment,  but  the  patience,  and 
make  men  clamorous  for  the  vote  without  in  the  least 
affecting  it,  —  we  shall  rather  attempt  conveying  to  our 
readers  some  idea  of  the  appearance  of  the  Assembly,  and 
of  its  leading  men,  than  venture  to  solicit  their  atten- 
tion to  the  subjects  with  which  the  Assembly  has  had  to 
deal.  It  is  not  in  the  nature  of  the  mind  to  be  contented 
with  the  mere  names  of  men,  or  the  mere  dry  details  of 
events.  The  imagination,  even  where  least  active,  is  ever 
engaged  in  drawing  scenes  and  portraits ;  and  hence  the 
widely-spread  popularity  of  that  style  of  composition  in 
wliich  Bunyan  and  Scott  were  such  masters,  —  the  style  in 
whicli  narrative,  reflection,  and  dialogue  are  blent,  and 
relieved  by  description.  It  is,  of  all  other  styles,  the  best 
suited  to  satisfy,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  the  crav- 
ings of  the  entire  mind. 

We  stand  fronting  the  Lord  High  Commissioner,  a 
robust,  handsome  man  of  forty-nine,  in  a  military  uniform, 
and  see  the  moderator  seated  immediately  below,  and  the 
table  of  the  House  in  front  laden  with  books  and  papers. 
There  are  one  or  two  men  in  lawyers'  gowns  beside  it, 
with  large  bunches  of  gray  horse-hair  on  the  outsides  of 
their   head,   and   high    notions    of  the    Court    of  Session 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY   OF    1841.       305 

witliin.  In  the  cases  in  which  the  countenance  is  smooth 
and  youthful,  there  is  to  an  unaccustomed  eye  something 
singularly  ludicrous  in  a  disguise  so  uncouth.  It  must,  no 
doubt,  have  been  deemed  impressive  some  two  or  three 
centuries  ago ;  but  few  in  the  present  day  will  maintain 
that  the  horse's  hair  might  not  have  been  left  in  the 
horse's  tail,  and  yet  the  learned  gentlemen  have  looked 
none  the  less  wise.  A  few  leading  men  surround  the 
table.  The  antagonist  parties  are  ranged  fronting  each 
other,  on  the  seats  that  rise  on  the  opposite  sides,  or 
mingle  together  on  those  in  front.  Mark  how  very  thin 
the  ranks  of  Moderatisra  have  become.  They  occupy 
merely  a  few  of  the  nearer  seats,  forming,  as  it  were,  but 
a  front  lining  to  the  wide  vacuity  behind.  The  joarty  seems 
melting  away,  like  icebergs  in  summer.  There  is,  on  the 
contrary,  a  dense,  compact  square  on  the  opposite  side, 
that  stretches  far  under  the  gallery,  and  which  is  visibly 
adding  to  its  numbers  year  after  year.  We  restrict  our 
sketches  at  present  to  the  decaying  party.  Whatever  else 
may  be  affirmed  regarding  them,  it  cannot  be  denied  that 
tliey  wear  in  general  a  very  comfortable  air.  If  it  be  per- 
secution that  is  thinning  their  numbers,  it  must  be  of  a 
kind  under  wliich  the  individual  thrives,  though  the  cor- 
poration perishes.  In  nine  cases  out  of  ten,  they  are,  in 
the  language  of  Wordsworth,  "  rosy  men,  right  fair  to  see." 
Observe,  first,  that  elderly  man  seated  at  the  foot  of  the 
table.  The  face,  a  strongly-marked  one,  seems  indicative 
of  shrewdness  and  self-possession.  The  features  are  some- 
what of  the  Roman  cast,  except  that  the  nose  droops  more 
over  the  upper  lip  than  in  the  Roman  type,  and  the  cheeks 
are  more  pendulous  and  square,  rather  militating  in  their 
expression  —  which  seems  to  speak  of  the  languor  and 
relaxation  of  advanced  life  —  against  the  general  cast  of 
tlie  countenance.  The  forehead  is  well  and  equally  devel- 
oped, but  by  no  means  very  striking.  The  same  remark 
applies  to  the  coronal  region,  which  is  bald.  There  is  no 
surplus  amount  of  sentiment,  if  phrenology  sj)eak  true,  and 

2G* 


806      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

certainly  no  marked  defect.  Tlie  Lead  is  rather  a  large  one, 
but  by  no  means  of  the  largest  calibre.  He  is  rising  to  speak, 
and  the  general  hush  shows  that  the  Assembly  deem  him 
a  man  deserving  of  being  attentively  listened  to.  Mark 
his  figure  :  it  is  compact,  well  built,  and  of  the  middle  size. 
Age  has  in  no  degree  exaggerated  the  rather  handsome 
outline ;  but  we  may  discover  its  effects  on  the  figure  not- 
withstanding. He  stands  with  equal  weight  on  both  legs, 
and  the  effect  is  that  appearance  of  stiffness  incident  to 
advanced  years,  which  painters  remark  as  inevitable  to  the 
attitude.  When  standing,  too,  he  uses  a  slender  staff". 
There  is  nothing  particularly  emphatic  in  his  mode  of 
speaking.  Nature  never  intended  that  he  should  be  a 
great  orator;  the  necessary  depth  of  feeling  and  vigor 
of  imagination  were  denied,  and  he  seems  to  have  known 
it ;  but  shrewdness,  self-possession,  and  good  sense  were 
given ;  and,  availing  himself  of  these  to  the  full  extent,  he 
has  rendered  himself  eminently  skilful  as  a  debater.  He 
is  thoroughly  a  man  of  business.  Some  of  our  readers 
must  have  already  recognized  in  our  description  Dr. 
George  Cook,  ostensibly,  if  not  in  reality,  the  leader  of 
the  Moderate  party,  and  unquestionably  one  of  their 
ablest  men. 

The  reputation  of  Dr.  Cook  is  a  mere  shadow  beyond 
the  precincts  of  our  ecclesiastical  courts.  So  far  from 
being  a  European  reputation,  it  is  not  even  a  British  one. 
He  is  the  author  of  a  very  sensible  History  of  the  Scottish 
Church,  which  people  do  not  read  in  Scotland,  and  which 
is  not  known  elsewhere;  and  of  a  very  respectable  biogra- 
phy of  Principal  Hill,  which  gathers  dust  undisturbed  in 
the  shelves  of  our  public  libraries.  The  works  of  great 
authors  make  them  a  name ;  but  in  the  case  of  Dr.  Cook 
the  process  is  reversed, — it  is  his  celebrity  as  a  Church 
leader  that  has  made  a  name  for  his  works.  His  historical 
volumes  appeared  at  nearly  the  same  time  with  the  "  Life 
of  Knox,"  by  Dr.  M'Crie,  and  both  works  traverse  nearly 
the  same  ground,  and  discuss  the  same  principles.     What 


SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841.       307 

have  been  their  respective  histories  as  literary  undertak- 
ings, or  what  the  comparative  amount  of  influence  which 
they  have  exerted  on  opinion  ?  It  is  wholly  unnecessary 
to  answ^er  the  question  ;  it  is  quite  enough  to  ask  it.  The 
great  historical  genius  has  reared  a  monument  to  the  fame 
of  his  country  conspicuous  over  Europe,  and  whose  preg- 
nant record  has  been  translated  into  well-nigh  all  her 
tongues.  The  man  of  respectable  general  talent  who  set 
himself  to  write  history  is  himself  a  sort  of  finger-post, 
visible  in  a  narrow  area,  by  which  Ave  contrive  to  find  out 
his  work.  The  same  character  of  obscure  respectability 
attaches  to  his  labors  as  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in 
the  University  of  St.  Andrews.  Is  the  fact  questioned  ? 
If  ill-founded,  it  can  surely  be  easily  met.  What  truths 
has  he  discovered?  What  new  system  has  he  invented? 
What  old  one  has  he  invigorated  ?  Wliat  fresh  impulse 
has  he  given  to  the  study  of  his  science  ?  What  sti-iking 
figure  even,  or  happy  illustration,  has  he  originated  ?  Who 
quotes  his  remarks  ?  Who  asserts  his  originality  ?  There 
is  but  one  answer —  "  None  ! "  Dr.  Cook  is  simply  a  man 
of  good  sense,  conversant  Avith  tangibilities,  —  things  that 
can  be  seen  and  handled, — but  singularly  ill-fitted  to  calcu- 
late regarding  the  invisible  elements  of  power  by  Avhich 
the  tangible  and  tlie  material  are  moved  and  governed. 
He  is  eminently  a  matter-of-fxct  man ;  but  the  balance  by 
•  which  he  weighs  is  a  balance  of  only  one  scale,  and  he 
overloads  it  with  the  temporal  and  the  secular.  Few  men 
stand  more  in  need  of  knowing,  as  a  first  principle,  that 
the  invisible  may  be  Avithout  body,  and  yet  not  Avithout 
Av  eight. 

Now,  mark,  beside  the  Doctor,  a  man  of  a  very  diflerent 
appearance,  —  in  stature  not  exceeding  the  middle  size, 
but  otherwise  of  such  large  proportions  that  they  might 
serve  a  robust  man  of  six  feet.  We  read  of  ships  of  the 
line  cut  down  to  frigates,  and  of  frigates  cut  down  to  gun- 
boats. Here  is  a  very  large  man  cut  doAvn  to  the  middle 
size  ;  and,  as  if  still  further  to  exaggerate  the  figure,  there 


308       SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

is  a  considerable  degree  of  obesity  besides.  Hence  a  very 
marked  uncouthness  of  outline,  with  which  the  gestures 
correspond.  But  it  is  an  uncouthness  in  which  there  is 
nothing  ludicrous :  it  is  an  uncouthness  associated  evi- 
dently with  power,  as  in  the  case  of  Churchill  and  Gibbon, 
or  in  the  still  better  known  case  of  Dr.  Johnson.  Mark 
the  head.  It  is  of  large  capacity,  —  one  of  the  largest  in 
the  Assembly,  perhaps,  and  of  formidable  development. 
The  region  of  propensity  is  so  ample  that  it  gives  to  the 
back  part  of  tlie  head  a  semi-spherical  form.  The  fore- 
head is  broad  and  perpendicular,  but  low,  and  partially 
hidden  by  a  profusion  of  strong  black  hair,  largely  tinged 
with  gray.  The  development  of  the  coronal  region  is 
well-nigh  concealed  from  the  same  cause  ;  but,  judging 
from  the  general  flatness,  it  is  inferior  to  that  of  either  the 
posterior  or  anterior  portions  of  the  head.  The  features 
are  not  handsome ;  but,  in  their  rudely-blocked  massive- 
ness,  there  are  evident  indications  of  coarse  vigor.  He 
speaks,  and  the  voice  seems  as  uncommon  as  the  appear- 
ance of  the  man.  There  is  a  mixture  of  very  deep  and 
very  shrill  tones,  and  the  effect  is  heightened  still  further 
by  a  strong  northern  accent ;  but  it  rings  powerfully  on 
the  ear,  and,  in  even  the  remoter  galleries,  not  a  single 
tone  is  lost.  That  man  might  address  in  the  open  air 
some  eight  or  ten  thousand  persons.  He  is  the  very  beau 
ideal  of  a  vigorous  democrat,  —  a  popular  leader,  born  for  a 
time  of  tumults  and  commotions.  Dr.  Johnson  threatened 
on  one  occasion  to  raise  a  mob;  and  no  one  acquainted 
with  his  indomitable  force  of  character  can  doubt  that 
Dr.  Johnson  could  have  done  it,  and  that  the  mob  would 
have  looked  up  to  him  as  their  leader.  The  man  we  de- 
scribe—  if  there  be  truth  in  natural  signs,  or  if  nature  has 
written  her  mark  with  no  wilful  intention  to  deceive  — 
could  lead,  and  head  a  mob  too.  But  where  is  conjecture 
carrying  us  ?  That  uncouth,  powerful-looking  man,  so 
fitted  apparently  for  leading  the  masses  broke  loose,  is  the 
great  friend  and  couJiJant,  and,  so  far  at  least  as  argument 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    ISil.       309 

and  statement  are  concerned,  the  grand  caterer,  —  flapper, 
as  Gnlliver  would  perliaps  say,  —  of  the  tory  Earls  of  Dal- 
housie,  Haddington,  and  Aberdeen.  If  nature  intended 
him  for  a  popular  leader,  never  surely  was  there  an  indi- 
vidual more  sadly  misplaced.  AVe  have  before  us  the 
redoubtable  Mr.  Robeitson,  of  Ellon,  —  the  second  name, 
and  first  man,  of  his  party. 

Mr.  Robertson  is  a  good  illustration  of  what  can  be  ac- 
complished by  sheer  force  of  character.  He  is  eminent  in 
no  one  department  of  literature  or  science.  His  mind  is  as 
little  elegant  as  his  person.  His  style  is  cumbrous  and 
heavy,  unenlightened  by  fancy,  or  uninformed  by  philo- 
sophical prin  ciple.  His  range  of  fact  is  exceedingly  narrow ; 
his  learning  not  above  the  average  of  country  clergymen. 
He  set  himself  to  promulgate  to  the  world,  in  a  bulky  pam- 
phlet, the  views  on  Non-Intrusion  entertained  by  the  early 
reformers ;  and,  omitting  entirely  the  previous  step  of  first 
acquainting  himself  with  what  he  professed  to  communi- 
cate, he  drew  his  knowledge,  as  he  wrote,  from  the  speeches 
of  the  Lords  of  Session  in  the  Auchterarder  case,  copying, 
all  unwittingly,  in  his  extracts,  the  very  blunders  of  the 
printer  as  part  of  the  text.  He  pronounced  on  the  judg- 
ment of  Calvin  at  a  time  when  he  only  knew  Calvin  in  the 
quotation  of  Lord  Medwyn.  And  yet,  though  thus  super- 
ficial and  unaccomplished,  with  no  name  beyond  the  Scot- 
tish Church  or  the  present  controversy,  Mr.  Robertson  is 
undoubtedly  the  natural  head  of  his  party,  —  the  leader  of 
the  forlorn  hope  of  Moderatism.  He  has  character.  Cour- 
age, momentum,  and  unyielding  firmness. 

Observe,  next,  that  elderly  and  yet  active,  young-looking 
man  in  the  front  seat.  He  is  of  the  middle  size,  slightly 
but  Avell  made,  and,  for  a  Scotchman,  singularly  mercurial 
in  all  his  motions.  There  is  nothing  remarkable  in  the 
form  of  the  head  or  forehead,  and  the  size  certainly  does 
not  exceed  the  average,  if,  indeed,  it  does  not  fidl  much 
below  it.  The  features  would  be  handsome  were  it  not 
for  that  singularly  disagreeable  Voltaire-like  expression, — 


810      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF   1811. 

quite  enough  of  itself  to  mfir  the  beauty  of  an  Apollo. 
There  is  a  fidgetiness  about  the  figure,  an  apparent  ina- 
bility of  sitting  still,  a  sort  of  uneasy-conscience  activity. 
The  head  jerks  from  the  right  to  the  left,  and  from  the  left 
to  the  rio'ht  ao^ain.  Never  was  there  a  more  inveterate 
whisperer,  or  a  more  persevering  smiler  of  smiles.  Let 
fortune  frown  as  it  may,  that  man  has  always  a  smile  in 
store,  —  we  should  perhaps  rather  say  a  silent  laugh  ;  but 
he  would  be  a  miserable  physiognomist  who  could  mistake 
his  smiles  for  those  of  enjoyment  or  triumph.  "These 
things  are  my  diversion,"  said  Pope  to  Richardson,  point- 
ing with  a  ghastly  grin  to  one  of  the  pamphlets  with  which 
he  was  ceaselessly  annoyed.  "  These  things  are  but  my 
diversion."  —  "May  Heaven  preserve  me! "  ejaculated  Rich- 
ardson, as  he  quitted  the  room,  "from  diversion  such  as 
has  been  this  day  the  lot  of  Pope."  The  smiles  of  the 
figure  before  us  become  contorted  at  times,  like  those  wit- 
nessed by  the  guidsire  of  Wandering  Willie  amid  the 
ghastly  revellers  in  "Red-Gauntlet,"  when  his  very  nails 
Jbecame  blue  with  horror,  and  the  marrow  was  chilled  in  his 
bones.  The  mercurial,  smart,  oldish-young  man  has  risen 
to  speak.  His  voice  is  clear,  —  so  is  his  style;  but,  unlike 
the  other  two  speakers,  he  succeeds  in  but  a  very  faint 
degree  indeed  in  attracting  the  attention  of  the  House. 
There  is  a  deplorable  want  of  weight  about  him,  both  mor- 
ally and  intellectually ;  and  the  audience  seem  but  to  listen 
occasionally,  to  pick  up  from  him  extreme  notions,  obsolete 
for  nearly  the  last  quarter  of  a  century,  but  curious  as  illus- 
trative of  the  Moderatism  of  the  last  age.  We  have  before 
us  a  Moderate  of  the  extreme  school,  —  a  man  true  in  all 
respects  to  the  old  character  of  his  joarty,  —  Dr.  James 
Bryce,  of  Calcutta. 

There  are  amusing  points  about  the  Doctor's  character; 
and  of  all  the  Church's  opponents,  he  is  perhaps  the  man 
whom  the  Church  could  worst  afford  to  lose.  The  opposi- 
tion of  the  others,  however  determined,  is  modified  in  its 
Ostensible  object,  if  not  in  its  intensity,  by  the  pressure 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY    OF    184L      iMl 

from  without.  The  Doctor's  opposition  is  the  nnchanged 
opposition  of  the  year  1796,  so  famous  in  the  annals  of  the 
Church  for  its  debate  on  missions.  We  have  now  before 
us  the  first  hterary  production  of  Dr.'Bryce,  in  the  form  of 
a  vohnue  of  380  pages, — a  prize  essay,  entitled  a  "Sketch 
of  British  India."  It  was  written  to  maintain  that  "-  to 
attempt  diffusing  Christianity  in  India  by  means  of  mis- 
sionaries (we  employ  the  Doctor's  ovvn  words),  would  be  a 
work  not  only  fruitless  in  the  issue,  but  dangerous  to  the 
peace  and  prosperity  of  that  country,  and  ultimately  fatal 
to  the  British  empire  in  the  East."  This  prize  essay  proved 
the  foundation  of  the  Doctor's  fortunes.  No  danger  to 
the  interests  of  British  commerce  in  Hindustan  could  be 
apprehended  from  a  man  holding  such  rational  views ;  and 
so  Dr.  Bryce  was  sent  out  by  the  East  India  Company  to 
represent  Scottish  Presbyterianism  in  Calcutta,  and  to 
eschew  missions.  Has  the  Doctor  been  since  converted  to 
other  views?  Why  not,  then,  give  the  public  at  least  one 
pamphlet  that  will  read,  in  the  form  of  a  "  true  and  faith- 
ful narrative  of  the  conversion  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  James 
Bryce  "  ?  It  would  form,  surely,  a  very  curious  work  in 
itself,  and  an  interesting  addition  to  Dr.  Crichton's  two- 
volume  list  of  converts  besides.  Cowper  speaks  of  his 
letters  as  the  mere  "shavings"  of  his  mind, — things  planed 
off  and  cast  away.  Few  minds  of  the  present  day  cast  off 
more  shavings  than  that  of  Dr.  Bryce ;  but  it  is  a  mere 
deal-mind  to  the  back.  He  published  his  prize  essay  in 
Scotland  :  it  saw  the  light,  and  died.  Pie  preached  news- 
paper paragraphs  in  India:  they  not  onl}^  died  themselves, 
but  were  well-nigh  the  means  of  killing  others.  He  printed 
sermons,  and  accused  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  of  making 
money  by  reviewing  them.  Do  any  of  our  readers  know 
anything  of  the  sermons  of  Dr.  Bryce?  And  now  he  is 
casting  off  shavings  as  lustily  as  ever  on  the  Church  ques- 
tion. The  number,  however,  is  no  doubt  exaggerated. 
Almost  all  the  more  absurdly  Erastian  pamphlets,  which 
cannot  be  read  even  by  the  men  who  try,  are  attributed  to 
the  pen  of  Dr.  Bryce. 


312      SKETCHES    OE   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

The  more  notable  mon  of  the  party  are  soon  exhausted. 
Observe,  a  little  to  the  Doctor's  right,  that  tall,  thin  man, 
with  the  singularly  grave  cast  of  countenance,  and  the 
very  long  neck  and  face.  We  have  described  Mr.  Robert- 
son, of  Ellon,  as  a  large  man  cut  down  to  the  middle  size. 
Here,  on  the  contrary,  we  have  a  man  of  the  middle  size 
stretched  out  to  a  stature  of  some  four  or  five  inches  more 
than  nature  seemed  to  have  intended.  It  would  appear, 
too,  as  if  the  elongating  process  had  been  restricted  chiefly 
to  the  neck,  face,  and  head.  Has  the  reader  ever  marked 
how  figures  seem  to  lengthen  when  viewed  through  a  pane 
roughened  by  the  bulb  on  which  the  glass  had  been  formed  ? 
The  appearance  may  convey  some  idea,  though  an  exag- 
gerated one,  of  what  we  describe.  That  rather  j^eculiar- 
looking  man  is  Dr.  Hill,  Professor  of  Theology  in  the 
University  of  Glasgow,  —  the  gentleman  preferred  by  the 
Senatus  to  Dr.  Chalmers.  We  need  hardly  add  that  he 
is  a  grave  mediocritist,  a  solemn  enunciator  of  common- 
places, a  man  who  never  originated  a  great  thought,  and 
who  never  sported  with  a  small  one.  Shall  we  describe 
any  of  the  others  ?  That  rather  good-looking  man,  with 
the  gray  head,  brown  whiskers,  straight  nose,  fresh  com- 
plexion, and  very  sharp  facial  angle,  is  Mr.  Bisset,  of  Bour- 
tie,  who  bids  Church  extensionists  peruse  his  j^amphlet,  and 
pause ;  and  the  adust,  robust,  middle-aged,  less  handsome 
man  beside  him  is  Mr.  Paull,  of  Tullynessle,  whose  sur- 
name begins  with  the  same  letter  as  that  of  Mr.  Pirie,  of 
Dyce.  They  are  both  decidedly  the  most  influential  men 
in  their  respective  Sessions,  and,  like  the  man  in  the  i^lay, 
have  been  si^eaking  prose  all  their  lives  long. 


PART    THIKD. THE    EVANGELICALS. 

The  better-known  men  of  the  minority  we  exhausted  in 
our  last ;  we  now  turn  to  the  vastly  more  numerous  body 
on  the  left  of  the  moderator  —  tlie  party  who  represent  in 


SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY    OF    1841.       813 

the  Assembly  the  great  nmjority  of  the  members  and 
elders  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  and,  with  but  a  very  few 
exceptions,  all  its  lay  members.  In  one  respect  they  differ 
strikingly  in  their  appearance,  as  a  body,  from  their  antag- 
onists. There  are  among  them  many  aged  and  venerable 
men,  —  quite  as  many,  at  least,  as  on  the  opposite  side.  But 
their  proportion  of  men  in  early  or  middle  life  is  greater 
in  a  very  marked  degree.  Slight  as  the  circumstance  may 
seem,  it  is  in  reality  an  important  one.  It  indicates  the 
tendencies  of  the  age  and  the  history  of  the  parties,  and 
whispers  of  a  principle  of  death  and  diminution  on  the 
one  side,  and  of  vitality  and  increase  on  the  other.  The 
same  remark  applied  in  this  country,  in  the  times  of  the 
Reformation,  to  those  two  antagonist  parties  of  which  the 
one  held  by  the  obsolete  superstition,  and  the  other  by  the 
revived  faith.  Few  conversions  take  place  late  in  life.  It 
has  been  stated  by  Dr.  M'Crie  that  the  conversion  of  the 
elder  Argyle,  when  a  very  old  man,  was  an  extraordinary 
instance,  and  that  it  stands  almost  alone  in  the  history  of 
the  Scottish  Reformation.  Phzier,  in  his  "  Biography  of 
Luther,"  remarks,  in  a  similar  style,  that  it  was  chiefly  the 
young,  or  at  least  men  who  had  not  passed  the  term  of 
middle  age,  who  ranged  themselves  on  the  side  of  the 
restored  Christianity,  and  fought  the  battles  of  Protes- 
tantism. 

The  moderator  of  the  Assembly  has  just  risen  to  mark 
the  rise  of  a  member  of  court.  There  is  a  peculiar  dig- 
nity in  the  manner  and  appearance  of  Dr.  Gordon,  and  a 
noble  and  .manly  beauty  in  the  countenance.  His  stature 
does  not  exceed  the  middle  size,  and  yet  the  figure  so  fills 
the  eye  that  he  appears  tall.  The  complexion  is  fresh  and 
clear,  but  the  face  is  thin,  and  the  hair  bears  its  marked 
tinge  of  bright  silver.  The  forehead  is  of  extraordinary 
height  —  quite  as  tall  and  erect  as  even  that  in  the  more 
idealized  portraits  of  Shakspeare ;  and,  though  the  breadth 
is  less,  it  is  quite  r.s  finely  rounded  a-top.  "A  forehead  of 
that  type,"  said  the  late  Dr.  S;)urzheim,  when  in  Edinburgh 

27 


314      SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1811. 

a  good  many  years  since,  "  is  one  of  perhaps  the  least  com- 
mon which  nature  produces."  There  is  not  in  the  whole 
Church  a  more  exquisitely  elegant  or  truly  noble  mind 
than  that  of  Dr.  Gordon,  or  one  whose  courage,  with  all 
his  gentleness  of  disposition,  would  mount  higher  in  a 
time  of  extremity. 

Now,  mark  that  elderly  gentleman  standing  at  the  end 
of  one  of  the  middle  seats,  against  the  crimson-covered 
barrier  which  fences  off  the  Lord  High  Commissioner's 
portion  of  the  house  from  the  central  portion  assigned  to 
members  of  Assembly.  He  has  risen,  not  to  speak,  but 
merely  for  change  of  posture,  for  the  debate  has  been  pro- 
tracted, and  he  has  been  patiently  waiting  it  out,  to  record 
his  vote  with  tlie  evangelical  party  in  the  cause  of  disci- 
pline and  reform.  He  is  a  man  rather  above  the  middle 
stature,  well  made,  and,  though  plainly,  very  neatly  dressed. 
Age  has  silvered  his  hair,  and  there  is  a  slight  stoop  of  the 
shoulders  ;  but  the  vigor  of  the  figure  is  left  unimpaired  ; 
and  the  silent  though  emphatic  testimony  of  the  counte- 
nance, the  compression  of  mouth  indicative  of  firmness, 
the  cast  of  sober  thought  which  dwells  in  the  singularly 
significant  lines  of  the  forehead,  the  deeply  contemplative 
expression  of  eye,  all  indicate  an  intellect  in  its  prime. 
The  complexion  is  pale,  but  healthy.  Observe  the  form 
of  head.  The  silvery  hair  clusters  round  the  forehead; 
but  causality,  rising  full,  broad,  and  high,  from  an  ample 
base  formed  by  largely  developed  knowing  organs,  stands 
out  like  a  tower,  shading  the  locks,  as  it  were,  to  either 
side,  and  strongly  catches  the  light  on  its  rounded  upper 
line,  as  in  the  portraits  of  Burke  and  Franklin.  We  have 
before  us  a  man  of  more  than  European  reputation,  —  a 
man  whose  name,  pronounced  in  any  part  of  the  world  in 
which  letters  are  cultivated  or  science  is  known,  would  at 
once  ensure  recognition  and  respect.  No  writer  of  the 
present  age  unites  a  higher  degree  of  literary  ability  to 
exact  science ;  no  wn-iter  of  our  own  country  unites  them 
in  a  degree  equally  high.     The  Earl  of  Aberdeen,  true  to 


bis  character  as  a  diplomatist,  and  indifferent  apparently 
to  character  of  any  other  kind,  could  describe  the  evan- 
gelical party  as  composed  of  men  low  in  accomplishment 
and  intellect  compared  with  their  opponents.  Spoke  his 
lordship  the  truth  ?  We  stake  the  intellect  and  accom- 
pHshment  of  that  one  man,  not  merely  against  those  of 
any  individual  on  the  opposite  side,  but  against  the  intel- 
lect and  accomplishment  of  the  whole  opposite  side  put 
together;  appealing  confidently  to  the  country  for  its 
verdict  in  the  case,  and  yet  confining  our  statement  of  the 
merits  to  the  bare  pronunciation  of  a  name.  That  man, 
with  the  nobly  philosophic  forehead,  and  (to  quote  from 
his  own  description  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton)  "  the  fine  head 
of  hair,  as  white  as  silver,  without  baldness,"  is  Sir  David 
Brewster. 

The  part  taken  by  Sir  David  in  the  present  struggle  is 
suited  to  tell  powerfully  on  ingenuous  minds  in  behalf  of 
the  Church.  When  the  collision  between  the  civil  and 
ecclesiastical  courts  took  place,  he  had  not  made  up  his 
mind  on  the  problem  which  it  involved.  He  saw  too 
clearly,  however,  not  to  see  that  the  question  was  no  indif- 
ferent one,  or  one  in  which  he  could  remain  neutral  but 
that,  as  a  subject  of  the  realm,  and  a  member  and  oilico- 
bearer  in  the  Church,  it  would  be  imperative  on  him  to 
act  some  determinate  part  regarding  it.  He  accordingly 
set  himself  carefully  to  examine.  He  read,  and  studied, 
and  brought  to  bear  upon  the  subject  the  same  powers  of 
patient  investigation  which  had  rendered  him  so  eminently 
successful  in  the  field  of  scientific  inquiry.  What  has 
been  the  result  ?  It  is  only  necessary  to  mark  the  position 
he  has  taken  up  in  order  to  ascertain  the  conclusion  at 
which  he  has  arrived.  But  there  were,  perhaps,  disturbing 
influences  that  interfered  with  the  process.  Will  it  be 
deemed  a  disturbing  influence  that  Sir  David  was  born  a 
reformer;  that  throughout  life  he  has  been  the  determined 
opponent  of  sinecurists,  who  i)rofess  to  teach,  and  do 
nothing,  and    uncompromisingly  hostile  to  every  immor- 


316       SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

ality  in  the  class  who  set  themselves  to  acquire  a  smatter- 
ing of  theology,  in  order  that  they  may  become  qualified, 
in  the  sense  of  Dr.  Cook,  to  teach  it  again  for  a  bit  of 
bread? 

The  moderator  again  rises.  A  loud,  ruffing  noise  has 
broken  out  in  the  galleries.  At  least  two-thirds  of  the 
members  of  Assembly  have  joined  in  it,  and  the  business 
of  the  court  is  interrupted.  A  very  distinguished  mem- 
ber has  just  entered.  He  is  a  man  well  stricken  in  years. 
His  pace  is  slow,  and  his  locks,  like  those  of  the  two  gen- 
tlemen just  described,  are  bathed  in  silver,  —  "the  lyart 
haffets  wearing  thin  and  bare."  His  person  is  large  and 
massy,  though  his  stature  does  not  perhaps  exceed  five 
feet  nine  or  five  feet  ten  inches;  and  there  is  no  tendency 
to  obesity.  He  is  very  plainly  dressed.  The  complexion 
is  pale,  the  face  large,  and  the  features  uncommonly  firm 
and  massy.  There  is  an  inexplicable,  mysterious,  unde- 
scribable  something  in  the  expression,  that  inspires  awe 
and  respect.  And  mark  the  head.  It  would  be  saying 
marvellously  little  were  we  but  to  say  that  there  is  not 
such  another  head  in  the  house,  —  we  may  add,  not  such 
another  head  in  Edinburgh,  in  Scotland,  Britain,  Europe. 
The  breadth  across  the  forehead  is  what  the  phrenologists 
term  not  simply  large,  but  enormous.  The  length,  too,  in 
profile,  is  so  very  great,  that  the  bulky  heads  around  seem 
but  of  moderate  size.  The  front  portion,  however,  from 
the  ear  to  the  forehead,  is  considerably  massier  in  propor- 
tion than  the  posterior  region,  and  stands  up  more  con- 
spicuously ;  and  there  is  a  noble  development  a-top.  He 
has  seated  himself  a  few  feet  to  the  moderator's  left.  The 
grave,  deep  expression  seems  as  fixed  as  the  features  to 
which  they  impart  so  solemn  a  character.  But  he  is  evi- 
dently following  the  speaker  —  one  of  the  most  powerful 
in  the  house  —  with  much  interest;  and  all  at  once  the 
countenance  is  lighted  up  in  a  manner  as  difficult  to 
describe  as  the  expression  which  has  just  disappeared. 
We  can   compare  it  to  but  the  sudden   lighting  up  of  an 


SKETCHES    OF   THE   GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841.       317 

alabaster  vase,  or  to  an  instantaneous  gleain  of  sunshine. 
Ihe  expression  slowly  clianges,  until  it  lias  passed  into  the 
more  habitual  one;  and  he  rises  to  address  the  Assembly. 
All  at  once  every  individual  present  has  grown  a  zealous 
conservator  of  the  peace;  but  for  half  a  moment  the 
"hush,  hush,"  is  too  general,  and  makes  more  noise  than 
it  allays. 

The  speech  has  the  disadvantage  of  being  read,  not 
spoken,  and  read  at  first  with  several  stops  and  interrup- 
tions, and  in  a  rather  low  though  audible  tone.  But  there 
is  an  intense  attention  already  excited,  despite  the  appar- 
ent disadvantages.  As  the  speaker  proceeds,  the  voice 
rises,  strengthens,  deepens,  till  it  seems  to  roll  in  thunder 
through  the  house.  There  is  enero^etic  action,  confined 
chiefly,  however,  to  the  right  arm  and  shoulder.  The 
earnestness  is  overpowering.  Even  the  dullest  hearer, 
firing  as  he  listens,  feels  himself  carried  along  by  the  o'er- 
mastering  force  of  an  eloquence  whose  components  can 
scarce  be  analyzed,  but  which  is  at  once  power  of  charac- 
ter, of  argument,  and  of  illustration,  —  an  irresistible  sin- 
cerity, that,  through  a  magic  sympathy,  makes  others  sin- 
cere too,  at  least  for  the  time,  —  and  a  vehement  jDoetry, 
that  seems  but  to  j^ass  through  the  imagination  that  it  may 
assail  and  overpower  the  heart.  Eloquence  has  been  com- 
pared to  a  stream ;  but  here  the  comparison  seems  inade- 
quate. We  must  have  overbearing  ponderosity  and  heat 
as  well  as  resistless  rapidity.  We  must  have  weight  as 
well  as  motion.  If  we  illustrate  by  a  stream  at  all,  it  must 
be  by  a  stream  of  dense,  molten  lava  pouring  down  the 
steep  side  of  a  mountain,  and  floating  away  on  its  surface 
rock  and  stones,  and  entire  buildings.  "  There  is  no  man," 
said  Jeffrey  of  the  present  speaker,  "that  so  enables  me  to 
form  a  conception  of  the  oratory  of  Demosthenes."  Need 
we  name  the  far-known  leader  of  the  Scottish  Church,  Dr. 
Thomas  Chalmei-s,  "  the  greatest  of  living  Scotsmen,"  or 
attempt  drawing  the  character  of  a  man  more  extensively 
known  than  perhaps  any  other  of  the  present  age,  and 
destined  to  grow  upon  posterity  ? 

27*^ 


318       SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

Mark,  in  the  same  corner  of  the  house,  but  several  seat- 
breadths  further  away  from  the  moderator,  a  person  of  a 
very  different  appearance.  He  is  below  the  middle  stature, 
and,  though  turned  of  thirty  by  perhaps  five  or  six  years, 
seems  at  this  distance,  from  the  smallness  of  his  features 
and  figure,  some  years  younger.  His  person  is  well  formed, 
his  features  good,  and  the  expression  seems  indicative  of 
great  activity  and  energy.  The  forehead  is  very  remark- 
able. We  are  by  no  means  sure  of  the  truth  of  phrenology 
in  its  minuter  details ;  but  nature  does  certainly  seem  to 
set  her  mark  on  the  foreheads  of  men  of  extraordinary 
capacity.  In  the  man  before  us,  the  part  immediately 
above  the  eyes  —  the  seat,  it  is  alleged,  of  the  knowing 
organs  —  is  in  exact  proportion  to  the  face  below;  but  the 
upper  part  swells  out  in  the  region  of  causality  and  com- 
parison, especially  in  the  former,  so  that  it  projects  at 
either  side,  and  forms  a  broad  bar  across.  There  is  perhaps 
scarce  a  head  in  the  kingdom  in  which  the  reflective  organs 
are  more  amply  developed;  and  the  mind  consorts  well  in 
this  instance  with  the  material  indications.  They  mark 
decidedly  one  of  the  ablest  men  in  the  Church,  —  a  man 
fitted  for  every  walk  of  literature,  —  whether  power  or 
elegance  of  intellect,  just  taste,  or  nice  discrimination,  be 
the  qualities  required.  It  is  curious  to  remark  how  un- 
willing people  generally  are  to  believe  that  a  person  by 
much  too  short  for  a  grenadier  may  yet  be  a  great  man. 
It  is  at  least  equally  curious  to  note  the  delight  which 
nature  seems  to  take  in  iterating  and  reiterating  the  fact. 
A  very  large  proportion  of  the  intellect  of  the  age  just 
l)assing  away  was  lodged  with  men  who  fell  short  of  the 
middle  size.  Napoleon  was  scarcely  five  feet  six  inches  in 
height,  and  so  very  slim  in  early  life  as  to  be  well-nigh  lost 
in  his  boots  and  his  uniform.  Byron  was  no  taller.  Lord 
Jeffrey  is  not  so  tall.  Campbell  and  Moore  are  still  shorter 
than  Jeffrey ;  and  Wilberforce  was  a  less  man  than  any  of 
them.  The  same  remark  has  been  made  of  the  great  minds 
of  England  who  flourished  about  the  middle  of  the  seven- 


teenth  century.  One  very  remarkable  instance  we  may 
perhaps  exhibit  to  the  reader  in  a  new  aspect.  In  the 
August  of  1790,  some  workmen,  engaged  in  repairing  the 
church  of  St.  Giles,  Cripplegate,  found  under  the  floor  of 
the  chancel  an  old  coffin,  which,  as  shown  by  the  sexton's 
register,  had  rested  there  undisturbed  for  a  hundred  and 
sixteen  years.  For  a  grown  person  it  was  a  very  small 
one.  Its  length  did  not  exceed  five  feet  ten  inches,  and  it 
measured  only  sixteen  inches  across  at  the  broadest  part. 
The  body  almost  invariably  stretches  after  death,  so  that 
the  bodies  of  females  of  the  middle  stature  require  coffins 
of  at  least  equal  length ;  and  the  breadth,  even  outside, 
did  not  fully  come  up  to  the  average  breadth  of  shoulder 
in  adults.  Whose  remains  rested  in  that  wasted  old  coffin? 
Those  of  a  man  the  most  truly  masculine  in  his  cast  of  mind, 
and  the  most  gigantic  in  intellect,  which  Britain,  or  the 
world,  ever  produced,  —  the  defender  of  the  rights  of  the 
people  of  England  ;  as  a  scholar,  first  among  the  learned 
of  Europe;  as  a  poet,  not  only  more  sublime  than  any 
other  uninspired  writer,  but,  as  has  been  justly  said,  more 
fertile  in  true  sublimities  than  all  other  uninspired  writers 
put  together.  The  small  old  coffin  disinterred  from  out  the 
chancel  of  St.  Giles  contained  the  remains  of  that  John 
Milton  who  died  at  his  house  in  Bunhill  Fields  in  the  win- 
ter of  1674,  —  the  all-powerful  controversialist  who,  in  the 
cause  of  the  people,  crushed  the  learned  Salmasius  full  in 
the  view  of  Europe,  —  the  poet  who  produced  the  "Para- 
dise Lost."  But  we  find  we  have  exhausted  our  space  for 
the  present,  ere  we  have  finished  or  named  our  portrait. 


PART  FOURTH. THE  EVANGELICALS. 

We  resume  our  half-finished  portrait.  The  gentleman 
whose  appearance  was  sketched  in  our  last  has  risen  to 
address  the  Assembly,  and  a  general  "hush"  runs  along 
the  galleries,  like  that  which  greeted  the  speaker  previously 


320      SKETCHES    OF   THE   GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OP    1841. 

described.  The  voice  is  clear  and  well  modulated ;  the 
action  simple.  The  arm  is  stretched  out  at  an  angle  raised 
a  very  little  above  the  horizontal;  but,  as  the  speaker 
warms,  the  angle  rises.  Mark,  tirst,  the  wonderful  flow  of 
language.  Of  all  the  members  of  Assembly,  that  member 
has  perhaps  the  readiest  command  of  English ;  and  his 
spoken  style  the  most  nearly  approaches  to  a  written  one. 
The  words  pour  in  a  continuous  stream,  fitting  themselves, 
with  a  singular  flexibility,  to  every  object  which  they 
encircle  in  their  course  ;  insinuating  themselves,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  into  the  innermost  intricacies  of  every  thought ; 
sweeping,  with  a  steady  certainty,  along  the  lines  of  every 
distinction,  however  nicely  drawn  ;  and,  while  thus  exqui- 
sitely true  to  the  mental  processes  whose  findings  they 
signify,  modulating  themselves,  as  if  by  some  such  natural 
law  as  that  which  gives  regularity  and  beauty  to  the  crys- 
tal, into  the  combinations  which  best  satisfy  the  ear,  and 
accord  most  truly  with  the  rules  of  composition  as  an  art. 
Language  is  a  noble  instrument,  though  there  be  but  few 
who  can  awaken  all  its  tones.  There  is  something  very 
different  in  the  extempore  power  here  exhibited,  from  that, 
slowly  exerted  through  comjjlete  mastery  over  language, 
shown  by  our  more  accomplished  writers,  —  something  so 
different  that  it  is  a  comparatively  rare  matter  to  find  the 
same  individual  possessed  of  both.  The  language  of  Fox, 
so  fluent  and  powerful  in  debate,  trickled  but  slowly,  and 
not  very  gracefully,  from  his  pen.  The  written  style  of 
Chatham  was  loose,  redundant,  and  not  overladen  with 
meaning.  And  both  Dryden  and  Addison,  on  the  other 
hand,  and,  we  may  add,  our  own  countryman,  Adam  Smith, 
though  great  masters  of  English  as  authors,  —  men  thor- 
oughly acquainted  with  every  nicety  and  elegancy  of  the 
tongue,  —  could  scarce  find  words  enough,  when  they 
spoke,  to  express  their  commonest  ideas.  But  some  few 
happy  geniuses  have  been  masters  of  language  in  both 
dei)artments,  and  have  spoken  and  written  with  equal 
power   and  facility;    and   we  have   one    of  these  in    the 


SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF   1841.       321 

speaker  before  us.  Cowper  could  remark  to  his  friend 
John  Newton,  in  a  half-sad,  half-sportive  vein,  that  the 
world  was  singularly  unwilling  to  admit  any  style  to  be 
good  which  recommended  Christianity;  and  most  of  the 
writings  of  this  gentleman  labor  under  this  disadvantage. 
But  the  man  who  ventures  to  deny  them  the  praise  of 
great  vigor  and  great  elegance,  would  himself  require  to 
stand  on  higher  literary  ground  than  that  occupied  by  any 
enemy  of  the  Cross  in  the  present  day. 

The  subject  of  the  speech  is  a  question  of  heresy.  There 
have  been  numerous  charges  preferred  against  the  pannel, 
all  of  them  very  serious,  —  all  referring  to  beliefs  within 
whose  sphere  of  operation  the  offers  of  the  gospel  must 
have  been  rendered  of  non-effect;  but  they  have  been 
submitted  to  the  court  in  a  detached  and  separate  form, 
and  we  feel  disposed  to  wonder  how  any  one  mind  could 
have  fallen  into  error  on  so  many  different  jDoints.  Mark 
how  the  speaker  grapples  with  the  subject,  —  how  he 
traces  the  various  branches  of  heresy  to  one  common  root, 
—  demonstrating  to  the  conviction  of  all  that  they  form 
parts  of  a  coherent  system,  —  a  system  as  coherent  as  that 
of  Robert  Owen,  or  Hume,  or  Hobbes ;  and  that  the  pan- 
nel, having  once  laid  down  his  erroneous  first  principles, 
must  have  been  as  miserable  a  logician  as  a  divine  had  he 
not  derived  from  them  all  the  various  inductions  of  error 
which  form  the  counts  of  the  indictment.  And,  this  point 
firmly  established,  mark  now  how  the  speaker  brings  the 
various  counts  to  the  standard  of  God's  word.  Mark  how 
irresistibly  complete  in  every  case  the  demonstration  of 
the  errors,  and  yet  how  very  brief  the  statement.  We 
need  hardly  add  that  this  singularly  able  and  accomplished 
man  is  the  gentleman  whom  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  would 
have  so  fain  recommended  to  the  Calton  Jail,  —  the  Rev. 
Mr.  Candlish,  of  St.  George's. 

But  who  is  that  tall  and  very  strongly-built  man  in  the 
same  corner  of  the  house?  —  so  strongly  built,  that  we  are 
scarce  aware   his   stature   considerably  exceeds  six   feet, 


822       SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

except  when  we  see  men  of  the  ordinary  size  beside  hiui. 
He  is  large-limbed,  broad-shouldered,  deep-chested,  and 
his  very  large  head  is  covered  by  dark-brown  hair,  as 
thickly  curled  as  that  of  the  Hercules  Farnese.  His  com- 
plexion is  pale,  indicating  perhaps  a  sedentary  life  and 
studious  habits ;  the  nose  is  slightly  aquiline,  the  com- 
pression of  the  lips  speaks  of  firmness ;  but  the  general 
ex23ression  is  one  of  mildness  and  tranquillity,  and  he 
seems  marked  by  a  peculiar  quietness  of  manner.  A 
speaker  on  the  opposite  side  has  been  making  some  very 
strong  statements,  and  the  gentleman  we  describe  has 
been  marking  a  few  jottings,  in  the  course  of  the  speech, 
in  a  small  memorandum-book.  His  employment  has  been 
matter  of  remark  in  the  galleries.  There  has  been  a  good 
deal  of  whispering  among  the  audience,  and  the  whisperers 
invariably  turn  their  eyes  in  his  direction ;  and  some  of 
the  more  disadvantageously  placed  among  them  stand  up 
on  tip-toe  to  catch  a  glimpse  of  him.  He  rises,  for  the 
other  speaker  has  sat  down,  and  comes  forward  to  the 
open  space  beside  the  table  of  the  house.  One-half  the 
spectators  in  the  galleries   and  the  area  behind  rise  too, 

—  rather,  it  would  seem,  in  consequence  of  some  sympa- 
thetic influence  than  from  any  exertion  of  the  will ;  but 
the  cry  of  "  seats,  seats ! "  brings  them  all  down  again,  and 
silence  is  instantly  restored.  The  speech  opens  with  a 
few  vigorous,  compact,  logical  sentences,  enunciated  in  a 
tone  of  subdued  power,  but  peculiarly  indicative  of  firm- 
ness and  resolution.  The  style  is  less  flexible  than  that 
of  the  former  speaker  described,  and,  though  the  sen- 
tences roll  on  without  pause  or  interruption,  less  copious ; 
but  there  is  an  even  more  concentrated  strength,  and  the 
precision  is  at  least  equally  great.  Mark  how  the  words 
arrange  themselves  into  sentences,  which  could  be  punctu- 
ated more  readily  than  those  now  flowing  from  our  pen, 

—  so  very  distinct  are  the  members,  and  so  very  defined 
the  meaning.  Mark,  too,  the  strictly  logical  sequence  of 
the  thoughts,  the  clearness  and  order  of  the  propositions, 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY    OF    1811.       323 

and  how  the  inevitable  and  undeniable  conclusions,  con- 
densed into  the  concluding  members  of  single  sentences, 
give  more  than  epigrammatic  point  to  the  style.  The 
amount  of  meaning  thrown  at  times  into  a  short,  compact 
antithesis  is  altogether  amazing.  The  speaker  warms  as 
he  proceeds.  The  voice  heightens;  and  such  is  the  force 
and  energy  of  the  tones,  that  the  arguments  seem  pro- 
jected, missile-like,  against  his  opponent.  There  is  corre- 
sponding action.  The  right  fist,  firmly  clenched,  is  raised 
every  two  seconds  to  the  shoulder,  and  then  aimed  with 
tremendous  force  in  the  direction  of  the  floor.  We  are 
reminded  of  the  "iron  man  of  iron  mould"  in  the  allegory, 
who  went  about  with  his  huge  flail,  beating  out  the  grains 
of  truth  from  the  chafi"  and  stubble  of  falsehood.  How 
palpable  every  incongruity  in  the  reasonings  of  his  an- 
tagonist has  been  rendered !  how  thoroughly  have  the 
misstatements  been  exposed !  how  completely  have  the 
sophisms  been  frittered  to  pieces !  And  now,  after  every 
flaw  in  their  structure  has  been  pointed  out,  they  are  held 
up,  as  it  were,  at  arm's  length,  to  the  derision  of  all.  So 
entire  is  the  exposure,  so  very  finished  the  demolition, 
that,  without  the  employment  of  a  single  ludicrous  idea, 
the  eflTect  is  that  of  the  most  caustic  ridicule.  An  expres- 
sion of  blank  helplessness  falls  on  almost  every  counte- 
nance on  the  opposite  side  of  the  house.  These  arguments 
cannot  be  met,  these  statements  cannot  be  gainsayed  ; 
and  they  know  it.  The  speaker  has  finished,  and  the  indi- 
vidual who  has  encountered  so  tremendous  an  overthrow 
rises ;  but  he  rises  like  William  of  Deloraine,  when,  dizzy, 
blind,  and  haggard,  he  staggered  into  the  lists  "a  ghastly 
and  half-naked  man."  He  has  concluded,  in  his  confusion, 
that  some  reply  is  essential;  but  his  thoughts  are  scat- 
tered; and  so,  after  saying  nothing  in  a  few  sentences, 
lie  sits  down  again.  Who  is  this  right  stout  man-at-arms 
who  has  wrought  such  signal  confusion  in  the  array  of  the 
o])position?  Our  readers  are,  we  doubt  not,  prepared 
to  furnish  the  name,  —  Mr.  William  Cunningham,  of  Edin- 
burgh. 


824      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

Turn  next  to  that  gentleman  a  few  paces  away.  His 
stature  rises  a  very  little  above  the  middle  size ;  but  his 
person,  though  well  proportioned,  is  rather  delicate  than 
robust.  There  is  something  very  gentlemanly  in  the 
whole  appearance.  An  air  of  openness  and  courtesy  per- 
vades the  countenance ;  the  complexion  is  fresh ;  the 
features  are  small ;  the  nose  straight  and  sharp,  but  not 
prominent;  the  forehead  well  developed.  He  is  a  man 
evidently  not  turned  of  forty,  and  yet  the  head  is  bald, 
showing  a  fine  fulness  in  the  region  of  sentiment.  He 
rises  to  address  the  Assembly,  and  a  deep  attention  is 
instantly  excited.  His  voice,  though  clear,  is  not  strong; 
but  the  silence,  from  this  circumstance,  is  just  all  the  more 
deep.  And  mark  the  classic  beauty  of  the  language,  and 
how  very  nicely  the  words  fit  the  ideas  Avhich  they  are 
employed  to  express.  There  is  a  singular  acuteness  of 
intellect  exhibited,  a  minuteness  of  information  —  espe- 
cially regarding  the  territorial  lines  of  demarcation  between 
the  civil  and  the  ecclesiastical  —  that  renders  cavil  hope- 
less, and  a  staid  sobriety  of  judgment  that  solicits  and 
ensures  confidence.  Few  men  so  completely  possess  the 
art  of  making  facts  tell  by  placing  them  in  a  light  so  clear 
that  the  just  inference  becomes  inevitable  ;  and  they  thus 
come  to  serve  the  purposes  of  both  fact  and  argument  too. 
There  is  a  refreshing  manliness  of  spirit  in  the  whole  tone, 
and  a  nobleness  of  aspiration  after  the  good,  the  just, 
the  fair,  the  honorable,  which  even  the  men  who  differ 
from  him  most,  if  in  any  degree  men  of  candor  and  right 
feeling,  cannot  but  recognize  and  esteem.  A  gleam  of 
imagination  occasionally  lights  up  the  simple  elegance  of 
his  style,  and  he  concludes  in  a  vein  of  chaste  and  graceful 
poetry.  That  speaker  is  Alexander  Dunlop,  —  a  man 
authoritatively  quoted  in  our  civil  courts  in  questions  of 
ecclesiastical  polity,  and  well  and  honorably  known  in 
the  present  momentous  struggle  as  a  powerful  champion 
on  the  side  of  the  Church,  and  a  shrewd  and  sagacious 
leader. 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF    1841.       325 

The  Church  of  Scotland  has  hereditary  claims  on  Mr. 
Dunlop.  Her  cause  is  a  family  one  —  a  sort  of  heir-loom. 
One  of  his  ancestors  —  the  well-known  Principal  Carstairs, 
the  friend  and  adviser  of  William  of  Orange  —  was  sub- 
jected, for  her  sake,  in  the  persecution  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  to  the  thurabkins,  and  bore  the  torture  without 
shrinking.  An  ancestor  in  the  male  line,  now  known  as 
the  elder  Dunlop,  to  distinguish  him  from  his  descendant, 
was  the  editor  of  that  admirable  Collection  of  Confessions 
of  Faith,  Catechisms,  and  Books  of  Order  and  Discipline, 
of  public  authority  in  the  Church,  published  early  in  the 
last  century,  and  now  recognized  as  so  valuable  that  it 
sells  for  some  four  or  five  times  the  original  price.  The 
cause  of  the  Church  is  thus  a  hereditary  cause  to  this  gen- 
tleman, —  a  circumstance  which  must  no  doubt  have  had 
its  predisposing  influence ;  but  it  does  surely  bear  on  the 
present  collision,  that  the  lawyer  who  was  deemed  of 
highest  authority  in  Scotch  ecclesiastical  law  ere  the  con- 
flict began,  —  a  man  whose  opinions  and  facts  on  ecclesi- 
astical questions  have  been  quoted  by  pleaders  as  decisive, 
and  sustained  by  judges  as  just, — should  have  so  deter- 
minedly and  unhesitatingly  taken  up  his  position  on  the 
side  of  the  Church.  The  special  pleaders  who  now  most 
strenuously  oppose  him  were  in  the  habit,  scarce  three 
years  ago,  of  quoting  him  as  an  authority.  We  do  not 
know  a  better  illustration  than  Mr.  Dunlop  of  Bacon's 
remark,  "  A  man  young  in  years  may  be  yet  old  in  hours, 
if  he  has  lost  no  time."  Commentators  on  law  rarely 
pass  into  authorities  during  their  lives,  and  are  not  often 
referred  to  in  court  by  their  contemporaries ;  and  yet  we 
have  learned  that  Mr.  Dunlop  was  little  turned  of  thirty 
when  his  work  on  "  Parochial  Law"  came  to  be  regarded 
as  of  standard  authority. 

Mark,  now,  that  gentleman  in  the  seat  under  the  gallery. 
He  is  of  the  middle  size,  and  well  but  not  strongly  made. 
His  complexion  is  of  a  transparent  paleness,  that  speaks 
perhajDS  of  severe  study,  perhaps  of  delicate  health,  —  very 


326      SKETCHES    OE   THE    GENERAL    ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

possibly  of  both.  His  features  are  regular ;  the  nose  is  of 
the  straight  Grecian  form ;  the  forehead  is  of  large  capac- 
ity, and  very  amply  developed  in  the  region  of  causality. 
There  is  a  cast  of  abstraction  in  the  expression.  His  age 
approaches  fifty,  and  yet,  though  pale  and  thin,  we  might 
well  deem  him  some  ten  years  younger,  from  the  transpar- 
ency of  the  complexion,  and  the  smooth,  unwrinkled  char- 
acter of  the  skin.  We  have  before  us  Dr.  David  Welsh, 
the  friend  and  biographer  of  the  great  metaphysician  Dr. 
Thomas  Brown,  and  one  of  the  most  acutely  philosoi)hic 
intellects  of  Scotland  in  the  present  day.  His  biography 
of  his  friend,  indepen'lcntly  of  its  merits  regarded  as  a 
well-written  narrative  of  the  incidents  and  events  which 
marked  the  life  of  an  extraordinary  man,  is  one  of  the 
finest  pieces  of  metaphysical  criticism  which  the  present 
century  has  produced.  Dr.  Welsh  stands  very  high  as  a 
professor  of  Church  History,  —  a  professorship  which,  in 
the  last  age,  when  there  were  many  to  assail  the  Church, 
and  few  to  defend  her,  was  held  to  require  less  talent  than 
any  of  the  others,  but  which  has  now  come  to  be  difi^er- 
ently  regarded.  In  no  department  of  history  is  a  profound 
philosophy  more  indispensably  necessaiy  ;  in  no  department 
has  intellectual  power,  added  to  Christian  principle,  a  more 
promising  field  of  usefulness.  How  much  has  Dr.  M'Crie 
accomplished  as  an  ecclesiastical  historian !  and  how  im- 
mense the  influence  which  his  writings  exercise  on  public 
opinion  !  The  professor  of  Church  History  has  to  meet  with 
antagonists  such  as  Hume  and  Gibbon.  Moderatism  in 
the  last  age  could  cultivate  the  friendship  of  these  men, 
and  yet  hold,  even  when  complimenting  their  philosophy 
and  their  literature,  that  men  of  the  most  ordinary  capacity 
were  qualified  to  counteract  the  poison  which  they  were 
assiduously  spreading  in  the  historical  track.  Another 
opinion  prevails  now  ;  and  so  Dr.  Welsh  is  Professor  of 
Church  History  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  His  tes- 
timony on  the  side  of  the  Church  in  the  present  struggle 
we  deem  very  valuable.     It  bears  on  the  same  point  with 


SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841.       £27 

that  of  Mr.  Dnnlop,  but  it  rests  on  its  own  independent 
grounds.  Their  separate  evidence  has  the  merit  of  being  at 
once  distinct  in  basis  and  uniform  in  bearing.  We  have 
in  the  one  the  highest  authority  in  Scotch  ecclesiastical 
law,  in  the  other  the  highest  authority  in  Scotch  ecclesi- 
astical history. 


PART    FIFTH. THE    EVANGELICALS. 

We  resume  our  sketches.  A  gentleman  of  a  very  strik- 
ing figure  has  just  entered  the  court,  —  evidently  a  mem- 
ber of  some  note,  for  there  runs  along  the  gallery  a  hurried 
whisper,  and  we  may  here  and  there  see  an  extended  finger 
pointing  him  out  to  a  stranger.  He  is  an  erect,  muscular, 
lathy  man,  some  six  or  seven  inches  above  the  ordinary 
stature.  His  height,  at  the  lowest  estimate,  cannot  fall 
short  of  six  feet  two  inches ;  and  the  mould  into  which  his 
large  frame  has  been  cast,  "the  square-turned  joints  and 
length  of  limb,"  indicate  mingled  strength  and  activity. 
He  is  standing  manfully  in  the  breach,  in  the  present  con- 
flict, in  behalf  of  the  Church,  and  has  to  encounter  many 
an  assailant;  but  were  the  breach  not  a  figurative,  but 
an  actual  and  material  one,  —  such  a  breach  as  the  can- 
non of  Napoleon  made  in  the  walls  of  Jean  d'Acre,  —  and 
were  that  gentleman's  well-pointed  arguments  converted 
into  a  good  half-pike,  there  are  very  many  ingenious  men 
in  the  opposition  who  would  entertain  serious  objections 
against  joining  issue  with  him  on  the  question  of  its  prac- 
ticability. The  countenance  is  marked  by  the  lines  of 
resolution  and  firmness.  The  complexion  is  dark,  indicat- 
ing what  phrenologists  term  the  bilious  temperament,  and 
the  facial  angle  unusually  full,  approaching  more  nearly  to 
an  angle  of  ninety  than  is  at  all  common  in  even  the  Cir- 
cassian type  of  head.  The  head  appears  large  for  the  body, 
large  as  that  is;  and,  when  seen  in  profile,  such  is  tlie 
length  from  the  ear  to  the  forehead,  that  the  line  of  the  fiice 


forms  almost  a  square  with  the  line  a-top.  Though  not 
yet  turned  of  forty,  the  thick  strong  hair,  originally  coal 
black,  is  tinged  with  gray,  and,  with  the  deep  lines  of  the 
countenance  joined  to  the  dark  complexion,  speaks  appar- 
ently of  a  period  of  life  more  advanced.  He  has  risen  to 
speak.  Mark  the  clearness  and  power  of  the  tones.  They 
already  reverberate  through  the  house,  though  pitched 
apparently  on  a  much  lower  key  than  that  to  which  they 
are  capable  of  ascending.  Some  of  his  remarks  have  pro- 
voked the  anger  of  the  opposition,  and  there  rises  a  con- 
fused Babel-like  hubbub  of  sound,  loud  enough  to  drown 
any  two  ordinary  voices.  Not  that  of  the  speaker,  how- 
ever. Mark  how  it  also  rises  higher  and  higher  as  the 
confusion  swells ;  and  we  can  still  hear  it  ringing  over  all, 
"loud  as  a  trumpet  with  a  silver  sound."  The  clamor  sub- 
sides, and  the  speaker  proceeds.  The  ideas  are  as  clear  as 
the  tones  in  which  they  are  conveyed,  and  there  is  much 
readiness  of  wit,  and  great  lucidity  of  statement;  but  the 
chief  element  of  the  speaker's  power  is  his  felt  sincerity. 
There  is  a  thorough,  straightforward  honesty  of  purpose 
about  him,  joined  to  an  unfeigned,  earnest  zeal  for  the 
great  first  principles  from  which  he  derives  all  his  deduc- 
tions, that,  without  disarming  the  hostility  of  his  opponent, 
at  least  robs  it  of  much  of  its  bitterness.  He  can  say 
severe  things  at  times  —  very  severe  things  —  of  Moder- 
atism,  with  its  dead,  inefficient  form  of  Christianity,  —  a 
body  without  life,  and  in  which  the  fermentation  of  putrid- 
ity has  long  since  begun.  He  can  say  still  severer  things 
of  the  aristocracy,  —  of  the  self-seeking  and  exclusive 
spirit  which  led  them  of  old  to  grasp  what  should  have 
been  in  reality  the  patrimony  of  the  people,  the  educa- 
tional and  ecclesiastical  funds  of  the  country,  through 
which  schools  and  churches  should  have  been  erected  and 
endowed  ;  and  very  severe  things  of  their  mean  and  nar- 
row-sighted policy  in  the  present  day.  But  there  is 
"nought  set  down  in  malice."  All  arises  from  an  honest 
conviction,   unembittered  by  a  single  grain  of  the  odium, 


SKETCHES    OF   THE   GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF   1S41.      329 

theologicum,^  when  he  assails  what  he  knows  to  be  but  a 
isliadowy  and  unsubstantial  semblance  of  religion,  and, 
undisturbed  by  one  particle  of  democratic  jealousy,  when 
he  denounces,  as  alike  wicked  and  foolish,  the  course  pur- 
sued by  the  great  body  of  the  titled  and  high-born  of  our 
country.  Mark  his  dress.  He  is  no  clergyman  ;  and,  were 
he  to  come  to  count  descents  with  the  gentlemen  on  the 
opposite  side  who  are  so  very  forward  in  maintaining  the 
cause  and  asserting  the  dignity  of  certain  noble  lords, — 
quite  as  forward  as  if  they  were  their  footmen,  and  engaged 
in  battling,  as  in  duty  bound,  for  the  honor  of  their  livery, 
—  it  would  be  found  that  of  these  noble  earls  —  for  of 
their  supporters  and  apologists  we  say  nothing  —  not  a 
few  would  deem  their  genealogies  mightily  improved  could 
they  but  claim  relationship  with  some  of  his  progenitors. 
We  have  before  us  Mr.  Maitland  Makgill  Crichton,  of  Ran- 
keillor,  —  a  gentleman  one  of  whose  ancestors  in  the  male 
line  was  the  friend  of  Knox,  and  a  fellow-worker  with  him 
in  the  cause  of  the  Reformation, —  who  can  show,  ranged 
among  his  family  portraits,  the  portraits  of  that  General 
Leslie  who  led  the  armies  of  the  Covenant,  and  who  is 
the  undoubted  representative  in  the  present  day  of  the 
ancient  Lords  of  Crichton  and  Fendraught,  though  he  has 
not  yet  asserted  the  title. 

It  is  singularly  gratifying  to  meet  with  the  good  old 
Church  names  still  enrolled  on  the  side  of  the  Church. 
The  two  vocables  "Argyll"  and  "Aberdeen"  express, 
when  associated  with  the  historical  recollections  proper  to 
each,  the  whole  controversy.  It  is  particularly  interesting, 
too,  to  find  names  that  had  well-nigh  disappeared  for  the 
greater  part  of  two  centuries  coming  again  into  view,  fixed, 
as  it  were,  in  exactly  the  same  places  as  of  old, — just  as 
the  fixed  stars  appear,  when  the  night  fiills,  in  the  very 
position  in  which  they  had  been  seen  when  the  night  fell 
last.  We  see  in  the  list  of  the  eldership  the  name  of  Brodie 
of  Lethen,  and  that  of  another  younger  scion  of  the  family. 
Presbytery,  in  our  northern  districts,  had  very  few  assert- 

28* 


330      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF   1841. 

ers  during  the  persecutions  of  the  seventeenth  century; 
but  its  few  it  had,  —  men  who  could  both  dare  and  suffer 
for  its  sake  ;  and  among  these  the  Brodies  of  Lethen  take 
a  prominent  phice.  We  have  now  before  us  a  very  scarce 
old  work,  the  "Diary  of  Alexander  Brodie,  of  Brodie,"  one 
of  the  Senators  of  the  College  of  Justice  of  1650,  a  staunch 
Covenanter,  and  a  man  of  deep  and  fervent  piety.  We  find 
in  his  notes  frequent  mention  of  his  neighbor  and  relative, 
Brodie  of  Lethen,  a  person  of  a  similar  stamp.  The  time 
was  one  of  great  trouble  and  perplexity,  —  the  winter  of 
1654.  Glencairn  and  his  Highlanders  were  in  possession 
of  the  open  country.  The  season  was  singularly  severe; 
for  the  sea  had  risen  further  on  the  land  than  for  forty 
years  before,  and  the  Findhorn  was  coming  down  red  from 
the  hills,  so  high  in  flood  as  to  be  unfordable  for  several 
days,  and  the  Plighlanders  could  not  get  across  to  wreak 
their  vengeance  on  Lethen.  But  at  length  they  came,  and 
burnt  every  house  to  the  ground,  with  all  the  corn  stored 
up  from  the  previous  autumn  for  the  sustenance  of  the 
family  and  its  dependents.  When  the  enemy  departed, 
the  inmates,  scattered  for  the  time,  again  met.  They  met, 
in  that  dreary  season,  amid  the  blackened  and  wasted 
walls,  when  every  streamlet  was  swollen  into  a  river,  and 
the  winds  howled  amid  the  roofless  and  darkened  turrets; 
but  with  what  intent  ?  We  employ  the  simple  language 
of  tlie  diary,  "To  come  under  a  new,  firm,  inviolable  cov- 
enant with  God,  that  tliey  should  be  his,  and  he  should  be 
theirs."  The  vows  of  each  are  recorded. "  "  Old  Lethen^'' 
says  the  diary,  "renewed  his  acknowledgments,  and  prayed 
tlie  Lord  for  a  willing,  honest  heart ;  and  desired  to  give 
up  himself  and  his  wealth,  family,  children,  wife,  and  his 
own  life,  to  the  Lord,  that  he  might  be  glorified  in  them, 
and  that  his  life  might  not  be  in  himself  and  to  the  world, 
but  to^  in^  and  for  the  Lord."  His  son,  the  heir  of  the 
house,  was  equally  decided.  "  He  professed  his  willing- 
ness to  consecrate  himself  and  his  to  God,  and  that,  as 
long  as  lie  had  a  house  or  fiimily,  it  should  be  the  Lord's, 


He  alone  should  be  worshipped  in  it ;  and  he  should  have 
no  God  but  Him."  Now,  we  do  think  it  well  that  the  old 
Presbyterian  party  should  reckon  among  its  adherents  so 
many  of  the  old  Presbyterian  names. 

But  we  digress.  Mark  that  elderly  man  beside  the  table. 
He  is  of  the  middle  stature,  but  stoops  slightly.  His  com- 
plexion is  pale,  inclining  to  sallow;  the  head,  though  not 
large, — at  least  not  of  the  largest  size,  —  is  well  propor- 
tioned ;  and  we  may  mark  it  in  its  full  development,  espe- 
cially in  the  regions  of  intellect  and  sentiment,  for  it  is 
very  bald.  Has  the  reader  ever  seen  Holbein's  portrait  of 
Erasmus,  or  a  faithful  print  of  it?  Mark,  then,  that  coun- 
tenance: the  form  of  the  nose,  the  compression  of  the  thin 
lips,  the  acute  and  watchful  expression  of  the  eyes,  the 
very  complexion  even,  is  that  of  the  elegant  and  subtile- 
minded  scholar  of  the  age  of  Luther,  whom  no  shade  of 
distinction  ever  escaped,  and  who,  if  not  always  powerful, 
was  at, least  always  ingenious.  He  rises  to  speak,  in  reply 
to  a  spruce  lawyer  on  the  opposite  side.  The  voice  is  not 
strong, — we  at  first  hear  very  imperfectly,  —  but,  though 
not  strong,  it  is  clear;  and  as  the  speaker  warms,  the  tones 
heighten.  He  is  evidently  cutting  the  nerves  of  his  oppo- 
nent's logic,  not  with  a  weighty  weapon,  but  with  a  sharp 
one.  The  process  has  a  considerable  degree  of  quietness 
about  it ;  but  the  stroke  is  reiterated,  and  the  nerves  divide. 
We  have  before  us  Dr.  Patrick  Macfarlan,  of  Greenock. 

It  has  been  often  remarked  that  the  two  grand  parties  of 
the  British  legislature  —  its  whigs  and  its  tories  (we  em- 
ploy the  words  in  their  old  meaning)  —  are  alike  necessary 
in  preserving  the  balance  of  the  state.  With  but  the  one 
party  the  wheels  of  government  would  revolve  too  rapidly; 
with  but  the  other,  they  would  either  stick  fast  or  slide 
backwards ;  with  both  united,  there  is  at  once  force  enough 
to  propel,  and  vis  inei'tice  enough  to  counteract  any  over- 
plus energy  in  the  moving  power.  And  hence  slow  but 
well  regulated  motion.  Now,  we  can  imagine  two  such 
parties  in   a  Church  blessed   with    a    representative  gov- 


832       SKETCHES    OF    THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY    OF    1841. 

ernment  like  ours,  of  Avliich,  somewhat  in  the  manner 
described,  the  one  would  be  of  signal  use  to  the  other, — 
parties  opposed  to  a  considerable  degree  in  ecclesiastical 
l^olity,  but  thoroughly  at  one  in  their  views  of  doctrines 
and  duties.  These  are  certainly  not  the  parties  which 
divide  it  at  present.  It  would  be  too  much  to  have  in  the 
Church  a  single  minister  who  did  not  preach  the  gospel ; 
nor  could  any  good,  but,  on  the  contrary,  much  evil  result 
from  his  being  there.  And  in  the  ranks  of  Moderatism, 
how  many  are  there  by  whom  the  gospel  is  not  preached, 
and  to  whom  it  is  not  known !  But  in  the  array  of  their 
opponents  it  is  easy  to  discover  the  elements  of  two  parties 
which  might  coexist  in  the  Church  for  good,  —  one  of  them 
as  a  regulating  influence,  the  other  as  an  impelling  force. 
We  recognize  in  Dr.  Maefarlan  one  of  these  personified ; 
and,  of  course,  employ  the  word  in  its  best  sense  when  we 
say  that  in  matters  ecclesiastical  he  represents  the  tory. 
The  Doctor,  some  thirty  years  ago,  was  a  sound  Non-In- 
trusionist,  friendly  to  a  modified  patronage.  He  has  seen 
since  that  time  nearly  all  his  party  shooting  ahead  of  him ; 
but  what  the  Doctor  was  thirty  years  ago  the  Doctor  is 
still.  He  is  just  a  sound  Non-Intrusionist,  friendly  to  a 
modified  patronage.  Did  the  reader  ever  see  on  the  banks 
of  a  navigable  river  a  beacon  fixed  in  the  foreground,  and 
the  vessels  sweeping  past? 

Now,  mark  that  strongly-featured  man  a  few  benches 
away.  He  is  barely  of  the  middle  size,  and  stoutly  made. 
The  nose  has  an  almost  Socratic  degree  of  concavity  in  its 
outline;  —  indeed,  the  whole  profile  more  nearly  resembles 
that  of  Socrates,  as  shown  in  cameos  and  busts,  than  it 
does  any  other  known  profile  to  whom  we  could  compare 
it.  The  expression  of  the  lower  part  of  the  face  indicates 
a  man  who,  if  once  engaged  in  battling  in  a  good  cause, 
Avould  fight  long  and  doggedly  ere  he  gave  up  the  contest. 
The  head  is  also  marked  by  the  Socratic  outline  in  a  sin- 
gularly striking  degree  ;  the  forehead  is  erect,  broad,  high, 
and  the  coronal  region  of  immense  development.     He  rises 


SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY   OF   1841.       333 

to  speak.  His  voice,  though  not  finely  modulated,  is  pow- 
erful ;  his  style  of  language  plain,  energetic,  and  full  of 
point,  —  such  a  style  as  Cobbet  used  to  write,  and  which, 
when  employed  as  a  medium  for  the  conveyance  of  thoughts 
of  large  volume,  is  perhaps  of  all  kinds  of  style  the  most 
influential.  He  is  evidently  a  master  of  reason  ;  and  there 
runs  through  the  lighter  portions  of  his  speech  a  vein  of 
homely,  racy  humor,  very  quiet,  but  very  effective.  That 
speaker  is  Andrew  Gray,  of  Perth,  one  of  the  vigorous  and 
original  minds  which  the  demands  of  the  present  struggle 
have  called  from  comparative  obscurity  into  the  contro- 
versial arena,  full  in  the  view  of  the  country.  Mr.  Gray's 
admirable  pamphlet,  "  The  Present  Conflict,"  took  the  lead, 
we  believe,  of  all  the  publications  of  which  the  unhappy 
collision  between  the  civil  and  ecclesiastical  courts  has 
been  the  occasion ;  and  it  must  be  regarded  surely  as  no 
slight  proof  of  the  judgment  of  the  man,  that  of  all  the 
positions  he  then  took  up,  not  one  has  since  been  aban- 
doned. He  marked  out  the  Torres  Vedras  of  the  ques- 
tion, and  the  lines  have  not  yet  been  forced. 

But  we  find  we  must  run  hurriedly  over  a  few  of  the 
remaining  characters,  indicating,  as  we  pass,  rather  the 
subject  of  a  portrait  than  attempting  to  draw  one.  That 
pale,  thin,  middle-sized  man  in  black,  with  the  prominent 
features  and  thoughtful  air,  is  Mr.  Charles  J.  Brown,  of 
Edinburgh,  —  a  man  of  an  acute  and  nicely  logical  mind, 
and  inferior  as  a  theologian  to  perhaps  no  minister  in  the 
Church  of  Scotland.  The  gentleman  beside  him,  with  the 
snow-white  hair,  ample  forehead,  and  dark  eyebrows,  is 
Dr.  Thomas  Brown,  of  Glasgow,  —  one  of  the  most  re- 
spected clergymen  in  the  kingdom, — a  man  who  succeeded 
Dr.  Chalmers  in  one  of  his  city  charges,  and  yet  preserved 
the  congregation  entire;  and  who,  at  an  age  not  far  re- 
moved from  tlie  threescore  and  ten,  preserves  all  the 
intellectual  freshness  and  vigor  of  his  youth.  The  thin, 
handsome,  erect,  elderly  man  beside  the  moderator's  chair, 
with  the  slendei^  ebony  cane  in  his  hand,  is  Dr.  Makellar, 


83-i      SKETCHES    OF   THE    GENERAL   ASSEMBLY "  OF    1841. 

the  moderator  of  Inst  Assembly,  —  a  gentleman  chosen  to 
the  office  from  the  general  weight  of  his  character,  and  the 
trust  reposed  in  him  by  the  Church,  as  one  in  whom,  in 
times  of  difficulty  and  trial,  the  most  thorough  confidence 
could  be  placed.  There  is  a  very  fair  representation  of  the 
magistracy  of  the  country  on  these  benches.  The  Church, 
if  in  a  state  of  rebellion,  has  certainly  very  singular  abet- 
tors. That  gentlemaidy  man  in  black,  rather  below  the 
middle  size,  is  Sir  James  Forrest,  of  Comiston,  Lord  Pro- 
vost of  Edinburgh.  The  taller  man,  a  few  seats  away,  is 
the  ex-Provost  of  Glasgow.  The  eminently  handsome,  well- 
built  man,  of  at  least  six  feet,  who  has  just  taken  his  place 
in  the  front  seat,  is  the  Sheriff  of  Fife.  The  aristocracy 
have  also  their  representatives ;  and  well  would  it  be  for 
the  country  if  the  average  character  of  the  class  stood  as 
high  in  all  that  regards  the  truly  good  and  honorable  as  in 
the  sample  which  these  benches  furnish.  The  lawyers,  too, 
muster  strong ;'  and  so  we  deem  it  an  interesting  feature 
of  the  collision  to  find  so  many  of  these  taking  their  stand 
with  the  Church,  in  determined  opj^osition  to  the  decisions 
of  the  civil  court,  —  holding,  as  we  do,  that,  were  the  case 
a  fairly  balanced  one,  the  professional  bias  would  have 
inclined  them  all  the  other  way.  Our  readers  cannot  fail 
to  remember  that  such  was  very  strikingly  tlie  case  in  the 
collision  which  took  place  last  year  between  the  House  of 
Commons  and  the  Court  of  Queen's  Bench.  Almost  all 
the  lawyers  of  England  declared  on  the  side  of  the  court. 
But  we  have  exhausted  our  space  in  passing  over  a  few 
of  the  better  known  names  of  the  party.  The  list  contains 
many  others  which  we  might  pronounce  with  but  small 
chance  of  recognition  on  the  part  of  the  reader,  —  the 
names  of  humble  laborers  in  the  gospel,  of  whom  the 
world  knows  little,  but  whose  ministry  God  has  blessed 
for  the  conversion  of  souls,  and  who,  in  their  obscure, 
though  surely  not  unimportant  spheres  of  usefulness,  are 
loved  and  honored  as  the  instruments  of  much  good.  It 
would  be  a  dark  day  for  Scotland  that  would  see  them 


SCOTTISH    LAWYERS  :     THEIR    TWO    CLASSES.  335 

ejected  from  their  charges,  and  strangers  thrust  into  tiieir 
i:)laces,  —  shepherds  whose  voices  the  flocks  would  not 
hear,  and  whose  unblest  footsteps  they  would  fear  to  fol- 
low. Tlius  melancholy,  however,  must  be  the  result,  if 
the  civil  court  succeed  in  maintaining  its  place  within  the 
territory  which  it  has  so  unhappily  invaded.  The  Church 
cannot  recede.  She  has  marshalled  her  front  of  defence 
on  the  last  rood  of  ground  which  she  can  conscientiously 
occupy,  either  with  respect  to  the  spiritual  welfare  of  her 
people  or  the  honor  of  her  Divine  Master.  There  remains 
for  her  no  back-ground  space  on  which  to  form  within  the 
pale  of  the  Establishment.  She  has  already  arrived  at  her 
last  barrier. 


SCOTTISH  LAWYERS:   THEIR   TWO    CLASSES. 

Saddletree,  in  the  "  Pleart  of  Mid-Lothian,"  is  made 
to  exclaim,  in  astonishment,  "  Who  ever  heard  of  a  lawyer 
that  would  suffer  for  any  one  religion  or  other!"  There 
may  be  humor  in  the  joke,  but  certainly  no  truth.  Some 
of  the  most  eminently  religious  men  which  either  this  or 
the  sister  country  ever  produced  have  been  distinguished 
members  of  the  legal  profession.  Sir  Matthew  Hale,  not 
more  eminent  for  his  unbending  rectitude  as  a  judge  than 
for  the  profundity  of  his  attainments  as  a  lawyer,  cultivated 
a  close  walk  wdth  God;  and  w^e  know  not  in  the  whole 
round  of  English  theology  a  more  thoroughly  spiritual 
composition  than  his  discourse  on  tlie  Knowledge  of  Christ 
Crucified.  Among  his  contemporaries  of  the  legal  profes- 
sion in  our  own  country  we  reckon  one  of  our  martyrs, 
Archibald  Johnstone,  Lord  ^yarriston.  The  early  half  of 
the  following  century  had  likewise  its  lawyers  of  eminent 
piety.  The  writings  of  Lord  President  Forbes  show  that 
the  ablest  jurist  of  his  age  or  country  was  also  one  of  its 
best  and  most  devout  men.     His  predecessor,  Lord  Presi- 


336       SCOTTISH  lawyers:   their  two  classes. 

dent  Dundas,  was  also  a  man  of  personal  piety.  As  the 
century  advanced,  however,  that  night  of  spiritual  dark- 
ness wliich  hnd  sunk  so  gloomily  over  the  Scottish  Church 
involved  the  Scottish  bar  in  a  gloom  at  least  equally  deep, 
and  still  more  palpably  haunted  by  the  gross  and  obscene 
shapes  which  come  abroad  at  such  seasons.  There  are 
writers  of  the  present  day  who,  though  not  at  all  particu- 
larly squeamish  regarding  what  and  how  they  describe, 
can  do  little  more  than  hint  at  the  grossnesses  and  de- 
baucheries which  had  come  to  characterize  our  Scottish 
lawyers  of  this  i3eriod.  Lockhart,  in  his  "Life  of  Burns," 
speaks  of  their  "  tavern  scenes  of  audacious  hilarity,"  and 
but  insinuates  the  rest.  Heron,  who  must  have  known  of 
the  matter  from  more  than  hearsay,  attributes  the  ultimate 
ruin  of  the  poor  poet  to  the  influence  of  their  example. 
There  still  survive  traditional  anecdotes  and  bon  mots  of 
the  class,  that,  like  plague-spots  on  the  walls  of  a  building, 
serve  to  show  how  tainted  the  atmosphere  must  have  been, 
and  how  deep'the  infection.  We  find  inklings,  too,  to  the 
same  effect  in  the  early  life  of  Scott,  —  more  than  mere 
hints  of  great  intemperance,  joined  to  great  profanity. 
The  Faculty  of  this  period,  though  it  seems  to  have  had 
marvellously  few  Christians,  had,  notwithstanding,  its  many 
elders ;  and,  as  might  be  anticipated,  we  discover  a  fierce 
extreme  of  opinion  on  religious  subjects  in  almost  every 
instance  in  which  they  registered  their  views  in  our  church 
courts,  —  a  bitterness  of  hostility  to  the  gospel  truly  won- 
derful. In  the  fixmous  debate  on  missions  (1796),  the  cler- 
ical leaders  of  Moderatisra  were  content  merely,  as  in  the 
case  of  Mr.  Hamilton,  of  Gladsmuir,  to  denounce  the  gospel 
as  something  so  immoral  and  bad,  that,  if  communicated 
to  the  heathen,  it  could  not  fail  of  destroying  their  native 
virtue ;  or,  as  in  the  case  of  Principal  Hill,  to  oppose  the 
scheme  of  sending  it  out  of  the  country,  sheerly  from  a 
fear  lest  the  missionaries,  when  they  got  beyond  the  reach 
of  the  law,  should  quarrel  on  points  of  speculative  divin- 
ity,  and   cut    one    another's    throats.      The   lawyers   who 


SCOTTISH    LAWYERS  :     THEIR   TWO    CLASSES.  8oT 

mingled  in  the  debate  took  liiglier  ground;  and  it  is  a  fact 
wortli  noticing,  that  at  least  one  of  these  lawyers  sits  on 
the  bench  in  the  present  day.^  The  divines  only  argued 
that  missionary  societies  should  not  be  encouraged  because 
they  were  in  the  main  mischievous  and  foolish.  The 
lawyer  who  is  now  a  magistrate  proposed  that  they  should 
be  dealt  with  as  bands  of  conspirators  leagued  against  the 
state.  We  need  hardly  add  that  he  forms  one  of  the 
majority  who  have  decided  against  the  Church. 

A  change,  however,  came  over  the  Scottish  bar.  The 
irreligion  of  the  class  had  become  well-nigh  universal, 
wdien,  to  employ  the  language  of  the  "  Presbyterian  Re- 
view," "through  the  influence  of  a  revival,  proceeding 
entirely  from  within,  converts  to  Christianity  were  raised 
up  from  among  the  ranks  of  the  careless,  the  worldly,  and 
the  infidel."  Lawyers  at  least  not  inferior  in  talent  and 
accomplishment  to  any  of  their  contemporaries  began  to 
walk  professedly  by  the  light  of  revelation,  and  to  illus- 
trate, by  the  purity  of  their  lives,  the  excellence  of  what 
they  professed ;  and  a  return  to  the  old  beliefs  heralded, 
in  almost  every  instance,  a  return  to  the  old  Presbyterian 
views  of  Church  government.  The  bar  during  the  darker 
period  had  produced  many  advocates  of  popular  rights, 
some  of  them  eminently  able  men  ;  but  the  rights  they 
asserted  were  political,  not  religious ;  for  while  its  earlier 
whigs  had  been  cast,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  into 
the  Scottish  Presbyterian  mould  of  their  country,  its  whigs 
of  the  middle  period  had  been  mere  irreligious  English- 
men. The  most  zejdous  protester  against  the  first  act  of 
intrusion  perpetrated  in  Scotland  under  the  infamous  law 
of  Bolingbroke  was  Duncan  Forbes :  his  zeal  was  that  of 
the  Avhig  grafted  on  the  Christian.  The  pointed  remon- 
strance directed  against  patronage  by  the  General  Assem- 
bly about  the  time  of  the  Secession  Avas  drawn  up  by  Lord 
President  Dundas.  And  the  authorship  of  the  period,  as 
connected  with  the  bar,  bore  a  similar  stamp.     Lord  Dj:eg- 

1  Lord  President  Boyle. 

29 


888        SCOTTISH  lawyers:  their  two  classes. 

horn's  pamphlet  against  patronage  is  one  of  perhaps  the 
ablest  which  has  yet  appeared  on  the  subject.  Though  no 
religious  man  himself,  he  had  eminently  pious  relatives; 
and  thus,  while  he,  as  it  were,  saw  the  question  with  his 
own  eyes,  he  seems  to  have  felt  regarding  it  with  their 
feelings.  Another  able  pamphlet  of  the  time,  written  in 
the  same  track,  was  the  composition  of  a  second  lawyer, 
Crosbie,  the  Councillor  Pleydell  of  "Guy  Mannering,"  — 
the  acute,  conscientious,  warm-hearted  Pleydell,  who  never 
thought  other  than  justly,  and  whose  feelings  were  ever 
as  generous  as  his  reasonings  were  sound.  He,  too,  was  a 
determined  opponent  of  patronage.  But  when  lawyers 
ceased  to  be  religious,  patronage  ceased  to  be  felt  as  a 
grievance,  and  their  whiggism  took  exclusively  a  secular 
form.  Whatever  might  be  their  ideas,  too,  regarding  in- 
dependence of  every  other  kind,  of  spiritual  independence 
they  had  none.  It  was  not  until  the  old  beliefs  were 
revived  among  them  —  the  beliefs  held  by  Forbes  and 
Dundas,  and  for  the  maintenance  of  which  Warriston  had 
died  —  that  the  old  principles  came  to  be  again  asserted. 
And  hence  that  most  important  portion  of  the  Church 
party  in  the  present  struggle  drawn  from  the  ranks  of  the 
legal  profession. 

It  would,  however,  be  saying  a  great  deal  too  little  were 
we  to  say  that,  while  this  religious  section  of  the  Faculty 
are  zealous  in  behalf  of  the  Church,  the  portion  whose 
character  has  undergone  no  change  are  merely  indifferent 
to  it.  There  is  a  bitter  hostility  evinced.  The  times  in 
which  a  mechanic  could  fight  for  the  honor  of  his  craft  are 
over,  but  not  the  times  in  which  a  lawyer  can  contend  for 
the  jurisdiction  of  his  court.  There  is  a  tangibility,  too, 
about  the  claims  of  the  Court  of  Session,  in  the  present 
instance,  which,  to  a  man  conversant  with  the  tangible 
only,  seems  to  have  peculiar  force.  They  relate  to  the  seen 
and  temporal,  —  to  things  which  are  the  objects  of  his  own 
belief;  whereas  the  things  to  which  the  claims  of  the 
antagonist  court  chiefly  refer  are  but  the   objects  of  the 


THE  NEW  POLICY:  EVANGELICAL  MODERATES.   339 

beliefs  of  other  men.  There  is  a  strange  confounding,  too 
(a  common  mistake  among  lawyers),  of  the  right  with 
what  they  deem  the  enacted.  There  is,  withal,  a  blind, 
but  too  natural  dislike  of  the  spiritual  element,  which, 
having  not  seen,  they  yet  hate.  And  hence  the  hostility 
of  this  class.  They  are  by  much  more  numerous  than  the 
other ;  but,  in  at  least  a  moral  and  religious  point  of  view, 
the  hostility  of  the  many  weighs  immensely  less  than  the 
support  and  friendship  of  the  few. 


THE  NEW  POLICY:  EVANGELICAL  MODERATES. 


said  a  shrewd  divine  of  the  unpopular  party,  a  member  of 
the  General  Assembly  of  last  year,  —  "  we  have  now  but 
one  safe  course  of  tactics  left  us :  we  must  unite  evangel- 
ical preaching  to  the  Moderate  pohcy."  He  spoke  to  only 
a  small  knot  of  friends,  but  the  remark  has  got  abroad. 
Unimportant  as  it  may  seem,  it  is  more  pregnant  with 
meaning  than  half  the  speeches  of  his  party ;  and  we  are 
much  mistaken  if  in  the  present  juncture  the  Church  has 
not  mo-re  to  fear  from  the  course  which  it  recommends 
than  froQi  the  Protest  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  James  Bryce,  late 
of  Calcutta,  or  the  Declaration  of  the  Rev.  Mr.  James 
Grant,  still  of  Leith. 

None  but  a  bigot  will  dare  restrict  the  piety  of  Chris- 
tendom to  his  own  Church  or  his  own  party;  but  there  is 
no  bigotry  in  affirming  that  the  piety  of  almost  every 
Church  and  sect  has  its  own  peculiar  type.  The  inopera- 
tive, mystic  piety  of  Rome,  as  illustrated  in  Fenelon  and 
Madame  Guyon,  was  very  dissimilar  in  aspect  to  the  manly, 
active,  spirit-stirring  piety  of  the  Puritanism  of  England, 
as  illustrated  in  its  Calamys,  Baxters,  and  other  worthies 
of  the  times  of  the  Commonwealth.  The  piety  of  the 
Scoto-Episcopal  type,  as  illustrated  in  Leighton,  with  its 


340       THE   NEW   POLICY  :     EVANGELICAL   MODERATES. 

quiet  tolerance  of  all  impurity  and  all  oppression,  was 
assuredly  a  very  different  thing  in  appearance  from  the 
stern  covenanting  piety  of  Presbyterian  Scotland,  as  illus- 
trated in  Melville  and  Henderson,  with  its  noble  declara- 
tion of  eternal  warfare  against  all  abuse  and  all  tyranny. 
The  basis  of  Christian  principle  was  the  same  in  each. 
We  have  as  little  doubt  of  the  vital  Christianity  of  Madame 
Guyon  as  of  that  of  Richard  Baxter  himself;  and  we  be- 
lieve Leighton  to  have  been  as  sincerely  pious  as  Hender- 
son. But  while  the  foundations  were  the  same,  the  super- 
structures were  different.  In  the  language  of  the  inspired 
volume,  "  hay  and  stubble,"  as  certainly  as  "  gold  and 
silver,"  may  be  piled  on  the  rock  which  human  hand  has 
not  laid.  The  piety  of  every  Christian  Church  has  its 
own  type ;  and  the  peculiar  and  well-marked  type  of  the 
piety  of  Presbyterian  Scotland  is  utterly  at  variance  with 
the  policy  of  Moderatism.  If  there  be  any  one  trait 
stamped  more  legibly  on  the  character  of  the  piety  of  our 
Church  than  another,  it  is  the  regard  which  she  has  ever 
manifested  for  the  will  of  her  Christian  people  in  the  for- 
mation of  the  pastoral  tie.  If  any  one  great  principle 
stand  out  prominently  in  her  history  as  the  main  object 
of  her  severe  and  long-protracted  contendings,  it  is  the 
principle  which  imperatively  demands  that  she  take  her 
spiritual  law  from  only  her  spiritual  Lord,  and  pay  respect 
in  all  things  which  pertain  to  eternity  only  to  Him  by 
whom  the  "praises"  of  "eternity  are  inhabited."  It  will 
prove  by  no  means  very  easy  to  reconcile,  within  the  Scot- 
tish Church,  Evangelical  doctrine  with  Moderate  policy. 
The  associations  of  three  centuries  conspire  to  render  the 
coalition  a  monstrous  one.  True,  in  a  few  extreme  cases, 
such  a  coalition  seems  already  to  exist ;  but  the  Evangelism 
in  these  cases  will  be  found  to  be  either  Evangelism  in  a 
deplorably  false  position,  or  Evangelism  of  a  radically 
extrinsic  type.  In  the  belief,  however,  that  the  Church 
may  be  in  some  little  danger  at  present  from  the  policy 
recommended  by  the  Moderate  divine,  we  would  fain  call 


THE   NEW   policy:     EVANGELICAL   MODERATES.       841 

the  attention  of  our  readers  to  the  consideration  of  the 
two  classes  of  persons  in  whom  the  coalition  which  he 
proposed  seems  actually  effected. 

We  would  first  remark,  that  a  very  minute  portion  of 
the  Evangelism  of  the  Scottish  Establisnment  is  Evangel- 
ism of  the  Scoto-Episcopal  type.  We  have  our  sigliers 
after  an  "audible  response"  from  the  congregation,  —  men 
who  would  deem  it  no  very  great  hardship  to  be  compelled 
to  t(se  the  sign  of  the  cross  in  baptism^  and  who  are  such 
sticklers  for  the  existence  of  a  certain  mysterious  virtue 
in  the  rite  of  ordination,  derived  somehow,  by  descent 
ceremonial,  from  the  times  of  the  apostles,  that  the  Pusey- 
ites  of  England  openly  challenge  them,  in  their  leading 
organs,  as  worthy  brethren  lucklessly  misplaced.  It  is  no 
marvel  to  find  the  Evangelism  of  such  men  dissociated 
from  at  least  the  non-intrusion  doctrine.  All  such  have  in 
them  the  germ  of  the  true  priest.  They  must  of  necessity 
regard  every  clergyman,  however  secular  in  his  personal 
character,  as  possessed  of  something  sacred  which  the  people 
want.  He  is  at  least  an  ordained  brother;  he  is  vested  in 
the  priestly  office,  and  the  priestly  office  is  a  high  and  holy 
thing;  and  if  ordination  be  so  good  a  matter  in  the  indi- 
vidual, what  must  not  multiplied  ordinations  be  in  the 
ecclesiastical  court?  What  weight  can  the  voice  of  a 
parish  have,  compared  with  the  judgment  of  a  presbytery, 
—  the  assent  or  non-assent  of  a  mass  of  the  profane,  unor- 
dained  lay^  set  off  against  the  solemn  decision  of  a  sacred 
conglomeration  of  the  ordained  ecclesiastical?  Hence, 
too,  much  of  that  monstrous  tolerance  of  evil  in  the  Church 
■which  is  peculiar  to  the  Evangelism  of  this  type.  Arch- 
bishop Leighton  and  Archbishop  Sharjjc  were  dignitaries 
of  the  same  Church  at  the  same  time,  —  "  brothers  in  GocV 
All  that  is  sacred  in  ordination,  according  to  the  Puseyite 
code,  could  have  been  derived  from  Pope  Alexander  III., 
though  foul  with  incest  and  red  with  murder,  or  from 
Cardinal  Beaton,  after  he  had  let  Mrs.  Marion  Ogilvy  out 
through  the  castle  postern.     Is  it  from  a  consideration  of 

29* 


342     THE  XEW  policy:    evangelical  moderates. 

this  kind  that  soaie  of  our  very  few  Scoto-Episcopal  Pres- 
byterians can  open  their  pulpits,  though  they  themselves 
j)reach  only  the  gospel,  to  brethren  who  neither  preach  it 
themselves,  nor  yet  know  it,  except  through  the  instinct 
by  which  they  hate  it  when  preached  by  others !  —  or  that 
they  can  make  common  cause  in  the  present  struggle  with 
a  party  tolerant  of  all  abuses,  and  infamous  for  all  ?  They 
are  a  class  from  whom  the  people  of  Scotland  have  some- 
what to  fear,  and  nothing  to  hope.  They  gild,  by  their 
purity  of  character,  the  feculent  grossness  of  their  party, 
as  the  mountebanks  of  the  last  age  used  to  gild  their  pills. 
They  have  the  merit  of  doing  their  duty  in  their  own 
parishes,  and  of  pursuing  a  course  of  policy  which  goes 
far  to  secure  that  duty  be  not  done  in  any  other  parish 
besides,  —  affecting  all  the  time  to  confine  their  interest  as 
ecclesiastics  each  to  his  own  little  sphere.  We  are  of  the 
opinion  that  the  moral  of  Archbishop  Leighton's  life  has 
never  yet  been  fully  read,  and  that  it  addresses  itself  pow- 
erfully to  this  class.  Our  readers  must  have  heard  of  the 
happy  reply  attributed  to  him,  when,  ere  his  final  decision 
in  favor  of  Episcopacy,  he  was  asked,  in  a  phraseology 
common  to  the  period,  whether  he  did  not  "preach  to  the 
times?"  —  "When  so  many  preach  to  the  times,"  said 
Leighton,  "  surely  one  solitary  divine  may  be  forgiven 
should  he  preach  for  eternity."  What  was  the  result,  as 
shown  in  the  history  of  his  life?  In  failing  to  preach  to 
the  times,  —  in  failing,  in  other  words,  to  assert  the  great 
principles  for  which  Christ's  people  were  then  contending, 
and  for  which  his  father  had  suffered, — he  failed  also, 
palpably,  utterly,  lamentably,  to  preach  for  eternity.  Ex- 
cept for  his  writings,  —  and  these  had  no  connection  what- 
ever with  his  unhappy  choice,  —  never  was  there  a  more 
profitless  life.  His  piety  —  and  who  can  doubt  its  depth 
or  fervency?  —  was  neutralized  by  his  position.  He  saw 
evil  triumphing  in  his  own  party,  and  good  depressed  and 
persecuted  in  the  antagonist  one ;  and  at  length,  quitting 
his  oflice  in  despair, — for  the  fruits  of  all  his  labor  liad 


THE   NEW   policy:    EVANGELICAL   MODERATES.        343 

been  but  clisappointment,  and  worse,  —  he  retired  into 
private  life,  and  died  in  obscurity.  His  story  has  not  yet 
been  written  with  an  eye  to  its  true  meaning. 

So  much  for  our  Scottish  Evangelism  of  the  radically 
extrinsic  type.  Its  Evangelism  of  an  opposite  kind,  in  a 
false  position,  though  the  amount  be  fortunately  very 
small,  —  so  small  that  our  readers  could  run  over  all  its 
representatives  on  fewer  than  half  their  fingers,  —  is  a  still 
more  deplorable  object.  Its  unseemly,  and  surely  most 
unenviable  and  uneasy  position,  will  be  found  to  have 
originated  entirely  in  some  peculiarity  of  personal  charac- 
ter. There  is  a  class  of  peculiarities  which  arise  from 
overweening  conceit,  and  which  are  of  all  human  frailties 
the  most  irresistibly  ludicrous.  Comedy  has  gleaned  a 
rich  harvest  from  among  them  in  the  past,  and  every  age 
and  every  locality  produce  their  fresh  supply.  There  is  a 
period  of  life  —  the  period  between  boyhood  and  early 
youth,  the  adolescent  stage  of  human  existence  —  when 
it  is  natural  for  almost  all  to  over-estimate  themselves ; 
and  perhaps  tliis  is  not  less  necessary  than  natural.  The 
confidence  felt  is  a  moving  power  to  urge  the  aspirant 
upward  and  onward  in  his  toilsome  career.  But  the 
ability  of  forming  a  juster  estimate  of  himself  comes  as  he 
proceeds.  He  feels  that  his  powers  have  their  limits; 
that  there  is  much  which  he  cannot  perform  at  all,  and 
much  in  which  he  is  excelled  by  others ;  and,  as  years 
mature  his  understanding,  and  difficulties  test  his  strength, 
he  learns  to  think  soberly  and  justly  of  himself  Such  is 
the  ordinary  course.  Minds  there  are,  however,  in  which 
the  overweening  confidence  of  adolescence  lasts  all  life 
long, — men  of  the  ordinary  stature,  who  mistake  them- 
selves somehow  for  giants,  and  who  cannot  be  convinced, 
frame  the  argument  as  we  may,  that  they  are  not  looking 
down  on  all  their  fellows.  It  is  a  fact  which  we  shall 
scarce  need  to  prove  to  at  least  one-half  our  readers,  that 
by  much  the  greater  part  of  the  falsely  placed  Evangelism 
of  the  Church  has  been  fixed  in  its  miserable  attitude  by 


844        THE   NEW  POLICY:    EVANGELICAL  MODERATES. 

this  ludicrous  but  not  the  less  lamentable  weakness ;  that 
the  few  men  now  opposed  to  the  measures  of  their  breth- 
ren, but  who  not  many  years  ago,  some  of  them  not  many 
months  ago,  were  zealous  beyond  measure  in  a  similar 
track,  are  men  whose  overweening  conceit  rendered  them 
standing  jests  among  the  lighter  spirits  of  their  several 
districts,  and  for  whose  laughable  vanities  the  graver  class, 
who  deemed  them  good  but  weak  men,  found  it  no  easy 
matter  to  apologize. 

Let  us  imagine  a  clergyman  of  no  more  than  the  ordi- 
nary calibre  snugly  placed  in  a  country  parish,  — -  indolent 
but  respectable,  —  remarkable  for  being  emphatic  in  his 
commonplaces,  and  for  having  nothing  else  to  be  emphatic 
in, — zealous  above  all  his  brethren  in  his  denunciations 
against  patronage,  and  apt  to  be  particularly  severe  on 
some  of  the  best  of  them,  just  because  their  denunciations 
were  less  frequent  and  less  loud  .than  his  own  ;  —  let  us, 
we  say,  imagine  such  a  person  dreaming  on  his  sofa  that 
he  was  decidedly  one  of  the  first  men,  if  not,  indeed,  the 
very  first  man,  in  the  Church.  Let  us  imagine  him  dis- 
covering that  he  had  a  very  large  head,  and  that  it  required 
a  very  large  hat.  Let  us  imagine  him  measuring  and  re- 
measuring,  and,  in  sliort,  finding  out  that  he  was  a  singu- 
larly great  man,  and  then  fully  resolving  on  serving  himself 
heir  to  Dr.  Andrew  Thomson  in  the  leadership  of  the 
Church.  Let  us  further  imagine  him  throwing  up  his 
parish  with  this  view,  and  accepting  of  a  chapel  in  a  large 
town.  Of  course,  to  a  person  like  him  the  way  to  the 
first  places  in  the  Establishment  could  not  be  other  than 
open.  Let  us  imagine  him  taking  every  opportunity  of 
speaking  in  the  inferior  church  courts,  —  making  long 
speeches  on  great  questions  because  they  were  imi:)ortant, 
and  long  speeches  on  little  questions  because  it  was  inge- 
nious to  show  how  mucli  could  be  made  out  of  them.  Let 
us  imagine  him  successful  in  rendering  himself  a  very  sad 
bore,  and  a  very  grievous  hindrance  to  all  manner  of  busi- 
ness, -with  no  one  to  listen  to  his  speeches  or  to  reply  to 


THE  NEW  policy:  EVANGELICAL  MODERATES.    345 

them,  —  with  a  drowsy  moderator  in  front  of  him,  and 
sleeping  reporters  behind.  Let  us  then  imagine  him  turn- 
ing to  the  press,  big  as  ever  with  his  own  importance,  and 
magnanimously  resolved  on  confounding  the  sleepers  by  an 
eloquent  appeal  to  an  impartial  public.  Let  us  imagine 
him  well-nigh  realizing  the  story  of  the  Welsh  curate  in 
Joe  Miller,  Avho,  in  printing  a  sermon,  requested  the  book- 
seller to  throw  off  as  many  copies  as  there  were  families  in 
the  united  kingdom  ;  but,  when  urging  on  his  publisher  a 
second  edition,  let  us  imagine  almost  the  whole  of  the  first 
returning  unsold.  Finally,  let  us  imagine  him  concluding 
that  half  the  public  and  two-thirds  of  the  Church  had 
entered  into  a  conspiracy  to  eclipse  his  bright  genius, 
—  thoroughly  convinced  as  ever  of  his  clear  claim  to  the 
leadership, — jealous  of  Dr.  Chalmers,  —  certain  that  our 
Grays,  Cunninghams,  Candlishes,  and  Dunlops,  are  but 
vain^  light  men,  with  hats  immensely  smaller  than  his 
own,  —  publishing  a  dull,  bulky  pamphlet,  crammed  with 
borrowed  thoughts  and  original  vituperation,  in  the  hope 
of  settling  the  present  controversy  and  crushing  his  old 
friends,  and,  in  short,  making  common  cause  with  Mod- 
eratism,  —  and  all  this  in  the  evangelical  garb.  Our 
draught  may  be  but  a  mere  fancy  sketch;  but  if  it  be 
otherwise,  has  the  Church  any  very  great  cause  to  regret 
the  opposition  of  such  a  man  ? 

Let  us  imagine  yet  another  case.  Let  us  conceive,  if 
we  can,  a  man  vain  to  a  proverb,  equally  convinced  of  his 
oratorical  powers  with  the  other,  and  of  his  natural  right 
to  be  a  leader  in  the  Church.  Let  us  imagine  him  ever 
involved,  on  the  score  of  personal  dignity,  in  controversies 
the  most  ludicrously  small,  —  engaged,  for  instance,  heart, 
soul,  and  spirit,  in  asserting,  to  the  confusion  of  all  and 
sundry,  that  his  newly  erected  church  should  be  called  the 
first  church  of  the  town  to  which  it  belongs.  Let  us 
imagine  him,  confident  of  his  own  unparalleled  powers, 
refusing  his  pulpit  to  a  man  such  as  Dr.  Andrew  Thom- 
son.    Our  Saviour  taught  more  than  good  manners  when 


346        THE   NEW   POLICY  :    EVANGELICAL   MODERATES. 

he  instructed  his  followers  to  choose  the  humbler  places 
when  they  sat  at  feasts;  let  us  imagine  the  injunction 
reversed  by  the  individual  whose  character  we  describe. 
While  yet  a  young  man,  let  us  imagine  him  pressing  him- 
self forward,  all  unbidden,  in  our  venerable  Assembly, 
amid  the  ao;ed  fathers  of  the  Church.  Let  us  imaijjine  him 
engaged  in  endless  speeches  that  could  not  be  listened  to, 
and  grown  a  thorough  master  of  that  particular  species  of 
fine  speaking  which  rejoices  in  supernumerary  adjectives. 
But  though  thus  forward  and  vain,  let  us  conceive  of  him 
also  as  a  zealous  assertor  of  the  original  principles  of  Scot- 
tish presbytery,  —  as  going  along  with  the  Church  in  all 
her  decisions,  — as  committing  himself,  in  reported  speeches 
and  printed  sermons,  to  all  her  principles,  —  as  publicly 
recognizing  her  leaders  as  men  of  God,  —  as,  in  short,  a 
foot-soldier  in  the  very  vanguard  of  the  party,  and  only 
nothing  more  because,  despite  of  his  own  estimate,  nature 
had  denied  the  necessary  power.  Imagine  him  either 
piqued  to  find  it  so,  or  that  a  dangerous  crisis  has  at  length 
come,  and  stealing  meanly  away  by  a  side-path,  of  which, 
of  the  hundreds  present,  only  one  other  individual  could 
avail  himself,  and  that  one,  by  his  own  confession,  not  a 
member  of  the  Evangelical  party.  But  our  sketch  is  not 
yet  completed.  Imagine  the  subject  of  it  taking  his 
place,  not  many  months  subsequent,  at  a  political  dinner, 
and  rising,  after  one  of  the  bitterest  Intrusionists  in  Scot- 
land, to  denounce  the  very  party  for  whom  he  had  so  long 
spoken  and  written,  whose  principles  he  had  professed,  and 
whose  determinations  he  had  defended,  as  a  party  with 
whom  he  had  "  no  sympathy,"  and  who  Avere  but  urging 
the  fall  of  the  Establishment  "  in  the  desperation  of  hwnan 
X>rider  Was  it  not  enough  that  he  had  saved  himself? 
Surely  a  very  little  magnanimity  might  have  enabled  him 
to  spurn  the  commonest  trick  of  the  renegade.  This,  too, 
may  be  but  a  fancy  sketch  ;  but  if  it  be  otherwise,  we  again 
ask,  has  the  Church  any  very  great  cause  to  regret  the 
opposition  of  such  a  man  ? 


MODERATISM  :    SOME    OF    ITS    BETTER    CLASSES.        34T 

It  is  scarce  necessary  to  remark  in  connection  with  such 
men,  and  especially  the  first,  that  it  is  one  ot  the  many 
advantages  of  onr  Presbyterian  Church  that  every  man 
finds  his  true  level  in  it.  We  have  our  leading  bishops, 
but  they  are  all  bishops  of  Heaven's  making.  It  is  through 
no  indirect  or  unworthy  influence  that  the  ablest  men  take 
the  first  place  in  our  Assemblies,  and  that  character  asserts 
its  power  there  with  all  the  force  of  a  natural  law.  This, 
however,  is  not  the  point.  We  have  described  two  classes 
who  either  already  unite,  or  are  on  the  eve  of  uniting,  the 
doctrines  of  Evangelism  to  the  Moderate  policy.  Their 
joint  numbers  would  scarce  amount  to  half  a  score;  but 
much  has  been  made  of  their  characters  in  the  present 
controversy,  especially  of  those  of  the  first  class ;  and  the 
Church's  worst  enemies  have  copiously  quoted  and  enthu- 
siastically cheered  the  pamphlets  and  speeches  of  the 
others.  We  would  say  to  the  people,  Beware  of  all  of  the 
Moderate  party  who  are  on  the  eve  of  joining  them. 


MODERATISM:    SOME   OF  ITS  BETTER   CLASSES. 

Let  us  suppose  a  young  man,  brought  up  in  all  the 
deadness  of  Moderate  principles  from  his  very  childhood, 
naturally  quiet  and  amiable,  and  of  a  soft,  retiring  disposi- 
tion. Let  us  suppose  him  marked  out  by  his  friends  for 
the  Church,  just  as  they  might  have  marked  him  out  for 
physic  or  the  law,  and  he  himself,  with  little  inclination 
one  way  or  another,  acquiescently  pursuing  the  necessary 
studies.     Let  us  suppose  him  at  length  settled  in  a  parish, 

—  respectable  in  acquirement,  unexce})tionable  in  conduct, 
and  possessed,  as  a  clergyman,  of  that  sort  of  negative 
character  which  has  formed  a  starting-point  to  thousands, 

—  a  starting-point,  in  their  upward  career,  to  some  who 
have  subsequently  become  at  once  jirops  and  ornaments 
of  the  Church,  —  a  starting-point  to  others  in  their  course 


848        MODERATISM  :    SOME   OF   ITS    BETTER    CLASSES. 

downwards  to  a  level  of  degradation  too  low  to  be  reached 
by  any  except  scandalous  and  unfoithful  ministers.  Let 
us  imagine  him  at  this  stage  with  all  bis  i:)redilections  in 
favor  of  the  Moderate  policy,  the  whole  course  of  his 
education  bearing  full  upon  it,  and  himself  as  yet  unquali- 
fied to  understand  anything  higher,  though,  through  the 
influence  of  a  temper  naturally  quiet  and  retiring,  little 
disposed  to  take  a  prominent  part  in  church  courts. 

Let  us  next  imagine  a  silent  but  very  wonderful  change 
taking  place  in  his  character.  Let  us  imagine  the  breath 
of  a  living  Spirit  kindling  up  into  light  and  heat  the 
hitherto  dead  embers  of  his  painfully  gathered  though  but 
inadequately  understood  theology.  "  The  wind  bloweth 
as  it  listeth  ;"  nor  can  we  say  why,  in  the  stillness  of  the 
calm,  the  sudden  breeze  should  rise  at  times  in  the  recesses 
of  some  solitary  valley,  and  heap  together  and  carry  up- 
wards in  its  eddies  the  hitherto  unseen  and  scattered  foli- 
age. Suppose,  however,  the  change  not  restricted  to  the 
clergyman  whom  we  describe.  Let  us  imagine  it  also 
extended  to  many  of  his  people,  —  a  singular  reformation 
taking  place  among  them,  —  open  immoralities  suppressed, 
and  an  anxious  concern  awakened  in  hundreds  together 
regarding  the  realities  of  the  unseen  world.  Let  us  ima- 
gine their  minister,  thoroughly  impressed  and  in  earnest, 
entering  on  a  course  of  duty  very  different  from  the  skel- 
eton round  which  he  had  at  first  proposed  to  himself,  —  no 
longer  restricting  himself  to  even  Sabbath-day  ministra- 
tions,—  not  even  restricting  himself  to  days  at  all,  but 
atrociously  guilty  of  the  very  abomination  of  his  party,  — 
preachings  by  night;  guilty  even,  according  to  Rowland 
Hill,  of  being  an  instrument  in  the  "conversion  of  souls  at 
unseasonable  hours."  And  yet  we  can  imagine  such  a  man, 
thus  zealous  and  sincere,  but  thus  retiring  also  in  his  habits, 
and  little  disposed  to  take  an  active  part  in  church  courts, 
remaining  nominally,  and  for  a  brief  transition  period  at 
least,  in  the  ranks  of  Moderntism.  His  doctrines  can  be 
no  longer  the  doctrines  of  his  party;  liis  policy,  were  he 


MODERATISM  :    SOME    OF    ITS    BETTER   CLASSES.        349 

called  on  to  act,  could  be  quite  as  little  their  policy.  It 
would  be  as  impossible  for  him  to  obtrude  a  hireling,  igno- 
rant of  God  and  religion,  on  a  parish  such  as  his  own,  as  it 
would  be  for  him  to  preach  a  gospel  tliat  had  not  Christ  in 
it.  But,  though  impelled  to  preach,  he  is  not  compelled 
to  act.  The  prejudices  of  his  education  have  still  their 
hold  of  him;  and  so,  nominally  at  least,  he  still  ranks  on 
the  side  of  Moderatism.  Would  that  the  party  had  many 
such !  In  the  first  place,  they  might  do  it  good ;  in  the 
second,  it  is  scarce  possible,  in  the  nature  of  things,  that  it 
could  retain  them  long.  It  is  not  on  one  occasion  only 
that  Evangelism  has  drawn  even  her  leaders  from  the 
ranks  of  the  opposition.  Henderson  had  but  to  be  con- 
verted, and  the  timeserver  and  the  intrusionist  became  the 
first  man  of  Scotland  in  forwarding  the  work  of  the  sec- 
ond Reformation. 

There  is  another  though  less  decided  class  whom  it  is 
also  but  justice  to  mention.  The  increase  of  Evangelism 
in  the  country  has  excited  much  bitter  hostility  and  much 
determined  opposition.  There  are  both  ministers  and 
elders  in  the  Church  of  Scotland,  and  especially  the  latter, 
whose  entire  exertions  in  their  official  capacity  have  been 
exertions  against  this  principle  and  its  workings.  Were 
we  to  strike  out  of  their  catalogue  of  doings  and  sayings 
all  they  have  done  and^aid  against  missions,  all  they  have 
spoken  and  written  against  revivals,  all  their  canvassings 
and  pamphleteering  against  church  extension,  all  their 
efforts,  secret  and  open,  to  secure  the  subjection  of  the 
spiritual  to  the  secular  power,  all  their  severe  and  pro- 
tracted labors  to  open  our  parishes  to  the  intrusion  of 
Youngs  and  Edwardses,  and  to  show  that  it  should  be  so, 
—  were  we  to  denude  them  of  their  deeds  of  this  and  a 
similar  character,  we  would  leave  them  nothing  to  connect 
them,  even  incidentally,  with  vital  Christianity.  The  whole 
of  their  acts  that  have  borne  on  religion  in  any  way  have 
been  acts  in  the  opposition.  But  the  party  has  another 
and  better  class,  —  men  brought  up  Moderates,  and  who 

30 


350        MODERATISM  :     SOME    OF   ITS    BETTER    CLASSES. 

Still  record  their  votes  on  the  Morlerate  side,  —  who  are 
by  no  means  devoid  of  the  feeling  tliat  the  standard  of 
duty  is  unequivocally  an  Evangelical  standard.  They  are 
men  in  most  instances  pretty  far  advanced  in  life,  by  no 
means  devoid  of  conscience,  nor  yet  unimpressed  by  the 
truths  of  revelation ;  and  who,  after  having  preached 
Moderatism  long  enough  to  discover  that  it  is  but  of  very 
little  use,  have  been  groping  doubtfully,  and  in  much  dark- 
ness and  feebleness,  after  a  "  more  excellent  way."  Instead 
of  opposing  the  schemes  of  the  Church,  some  of  the  class 
have  done  their  little  all  to  help  them.  They  have  been 
stirred  up,  partly  throuc;h  a  growing  seriousness,  and  partly 
by  the  example  of  some  of  their  neighbors  of  the  popular 
party,  to  more  diligence  than  they  were  wont  to  exercise  in 
their  parochial  labors ;  and  if  little  fruit  has  been  produced, 
there  has  been  at  least  a  desire  awakened  for  its  produc- 
tion. They  at  least  respect  Evangelism.  "Be  thankful," 
said  one  of  the  class,  an  aged  and  respectable  man,  to  some 
young  ministers,  his  co-presbyters,  —  "  be  thankful  for  the 
thne  in  which  you  have  come  into  the  Church.  When  ite 
entered  it,  there  was  less  light  and  lower  views  of  duty." 
Of  this  section  of  Moderatism  we  say  just  what  we  have 
said  of  the  other.  Would  that  it  were  a  more  numerous 
one !  It  is  at  least  convinced  of  a  truth,  which  men  such 
as  Dr.  James  Bryce  will  be  slow  to  learn,  —  the  truth  that 
Evangelism  is  the  vital  principle  of  Presbytery,  —  that  it 
could  have  no  life  without  it  as  a  Church,  and  no  stability 
without  it  as  an  Establishment. 

It  is  no  matter  of  regret,  we  repeat,  that  Moderatism 
should  have  its  better  classes.  The  true  matter  of  regret 
respecting  it  is,  that  the  individuals  of  which  those  classes 
are  composed  should  be  so  very  few.  The  party  has  its 
statistics,  —  its  unquestionable  and  unquestioned  tabular 
exhibitions  of  character;  and  in  these  we  unfortunately 
find  its  average  modicum  of  usefulness  fixed  exceedingly 
low.  Good  character  is  a  good  thing,  however ;  and  though 
an  over-large  supply  of  it  might  render  a  schism  in  the 


M0DERATI3M  :    SOME   OF   ITS    BETTER   CLASSES.        351 

party  scarcely  less  inevitable,  in  the  event  of  any  ill-advised 
perseverance  in  the  course  chalked  out  by  the  protesters 
of  the  Commission,  than  that  course  would  render  inevitable 
a  schism  in  the  Church  itself,  still  the  party  love  to  avail 
themselves  of  the  respectability  which  it  imparts.  It  is 
marvellous  how  often  single  names  are  referred  to,  and 
how  the  character  of  one  is  made  to  serve  for  a  hundred, 
e  have  been  reminded  of  the  fact,  we  know  not  how 
.ten,  by  an  old,  and,  we  are  afraid,  not  very  pointed  story, 
.old  us  by  an  aged  relative,  some  five  and  twenty  years 
ago.  At  a  time  shortly  after  the  old  pious  race  of  Scotch 
sailors  described  by  Peter  Walker  had  worn  out,  and  long 
ere  seamen's  chapels  and  Methodism  had  done  aught  to 
raise  a  serious  race  in  their  stead,  our  sailors  were  a  decid- 
edly irreligious  class.  Honest  old  John  Menzies,  of  Aber- 
deen, however,  who  lived  at  this  time,  was  not  only  one 
of  the  bravest  and  most  skilful  seamen  connected  with  the 
port,  but  also  one  of  tlie  most  truly  pious  men  of  the  city. 
Almost  every  one  knew  and  respected  John  Menzies.  A 
party  of  very  decent  women  had  met  at  Leith,  and  the 
conversation  turned,  among  other  things,  on  the  irreligion 
of  sailors.  "  Ah !  poor  fellows,"  said  one  of  the  women, "  we 
should  not  judge  over  rashly ;  there  are  surely  good  men 
among  them.  For  my  own  part,  I  can  say  that  one  of  the 
very  best  men  I  know  is  a  sailor."  —  "That,  cummer,  may 
well  be,"  said  another  woman ;  "I  also  know  a  sailor  who 
is  the  worthiest  man  alive."  —  "And  I,  too,"  said  a  third, 
"know  a  sailor  who  has  very  few  equals."  This,  of  course, 
looked  remarkably  well ;  three  Christian  sailors  found  on 
so  slight  a  survey,  it  was  hard  to  say  how  long  the  list 
might  become.  Unluckily,  however,  the  women  came  to 
compare  notes,  and  discovered,  in  consequence,  that  their 
three  super-excellent  sailors  just  resolved  themselves  into 
honest  old  John  Menzies,  of  Aberdeen. 


352   prayer:  the  true  and  the  counterfeit. 


PRAYER:  THE  TRUE  AND  THE  COUNTERFEIT. 

"It  has  been  long  held  by  the  i3eople  of  Scotland,  that 
prayei's  laboriously  polished  in  the  study  ere  repeated  by 
rote  in  the  pulpit,  —  fine  addresses  to  Deity  smoothed  up 
with  the  same  small  care  which  sonneteers  bestow  on  odes 
to  their  mistresses'  eyebrows,  —  are  in  reality  very  poor 
sort  of  things."  We  said  so  a  paper  or  two  ago ;  but  the 
justice  of  the  reflection  has  been  challenged.  We  hold 
that  it  has  its  foundation,  not  in  prejudice,  but  in  truth. 

A  Scotch  Highlander,  who  served  in  the  first  disastrous 
war  with  the  American  colonies,  was  brought  one  evening 
before  liis  commanding  officer,  charged  with  the  capital 
offence  of  being  in  communication  with  the  enemy.  The 
charge  could  not  well  be  preferred  at  a  more  dangerous 
time.  Only  a  few  weeks  had  passed  since  the  ex.ecution 
of  Major  Andre;  and  the  indignation  of  the  British,  exas- 
perated almost  to  madness  by  the  event,  had  not  yet  cooled 
down.  There  was,  however,  no  direct  proof  against  the 
Highlander.  He  had  been  seen  in  the  gray  of  the  twilight 
stealing  from  out  a  clump  of  underwood  that  bordered  on 
one  of  tlie  huge  forests  which  at  that  period  covered  by 
much  the  greater  part  of  the  United  Provinces,  and  which, 
in  the  immediate  neighborhood  of  the  British,  swarmed 
with  the  troops  of  Washington.  All  the  rest  w^as  mere 
inference  and  conjecture.  The  poor  man's  defence  was 
summed  up  in  a  few  w^ords:  he  liad  stolen  away  from  his 
fellows,  he  said,  to  spend  an  hour  in  private  prayer.  "  Plave 
you  been  in  the  habit  of  spending  hours  in  private  prayer?" 
sternly  asked  the  officer,  himself  a  Scotchman  and  a  Pres- 
byterian. The  Highlander  replied  in  the  affirmative. 
"  Then,"  said  the  other,  drawing  out  his  watch,  "  never  in 
all  your  life  had  you  more  need  of  prayer  than  now ;  kneel 
down,  sir,  and  pray  aloud,  that  we  may  all  hear  you."  The 
Highlander,   in    the    expectation    of  instant   death,   knelt 


prayer:  the  true  and  the  counterfeit.       353 

down.  His  prayer  was  that  of  one  long  acquainted  with 
the  approjDriate  hmguage  in  which  the  Christian  addresses 
his  God.  It  breathed  of  imminent  peril,  and  earnestly- 
implored  the  divine  interposition  in  the  threatened  danger, 
—  the  help  of  Him  who,  in  times  of  extremity,  is  strong 
to  deliver.  It  exhibited,  in  short,  a  man  who,  thoroughly 
conversant  with  the  scheme  of  redemption,  and  fully  im- 
pressed Avith  the  necessity  of  a  personal  interest  in  the 
advantages  which  it  secures,  had  made  the  business  of 
salvation  the  work  of  many  a  solitary  hour,  and  had,  in 
consequence,  acquired  much  fluency  in  expressing  all  his 
various  wants  as  they  occurred,  and  his  thoughts  and 
wishes  as  they  arose.  "  You  may  go,  sir,"  said  the  officer, 
as  he  concluded:  "you  have,  I  dare  say,  not  been  in  cor- 
respondence with  the  enemy  to-night.  His  statement,"  he 
continued,  addressing  himself  to  the  other  officers,  "is,  I 
doubt  not,  perfectly  correct.  No  one  could  have  prayed  so 
without  a  long  apprenticeship ;  the  fellows  who  have  never 
attended  drill  always  get  on  ill  at  review." 

Now,  we  are  of  opinion  that  the  commanding  officer 
evinced  very  considerable  shrewdness  in  this  instance.  We 
learn  to  make  our  common  every-day  language  a  ready 
medium  of  communicating  all  our  varioiTs  thoughts  and 
feelings,  Jusi  because  it  is  our  common  every-day  language, 
— just  because,  through  constant  habit,  we  come  so  inti- 
mately to  associate  the  arbitrary  signs  with  the  ideas  which 
they  represent,  that  at  length,  ceasing  to  mark  their  dis- 
tinct existence  as  signs,  they  become  identical  with  the 
thoughts  of  which  they  were  at  first  but  the  instruments. 
There  is  surely  no  fanaticism  in  arguing  after  this  fashion  ; 
nor  was  the  Scotch  officer  in  any  degree  a  fanatic,  though 
he  carried  the  principle  a  little  further.  He  argued  that 
the  men  with  whom  prayer  is  a  habit  acquire  the  language 
of  prayer ;  and  it  was  on  this  principle  that  he  tested  the 
suspected  Highlander.  The  mechanic  and  the  tradesman 
learn  to  wield  their  technicalities  —  so  stiff  and  unmanage- 
able to  all  but  themselves  —  with  as  much  ease  as  if  they 

30* 


854         PRAYER  :    THE   TRUE   AND   THE   COUNTERFEIT. 

"were  the  commonest  vocables  of  the  language.  The  vo- 
cabularies of  chemistry  and  the  mathematics,  of  geology 
and  botany,  however  difficult  and  repulsive  to  others,  never 
encumber  the  chemist  or  the  mathematician,  the  geologist 
or  the  botanist;  they  serve,  on  the  contrary,  to  impart 
clearness  to  their  thinking  and  fluency  to  their  reasonings. 
But  no  one  ever  mastered  these  vocabularies  without  much 
practice  and  study;  and,  in  like  manner,  the  closet  has  its 
vocabulary,  which  it  also  requires  practice  and  study  to 
master.  In  the  every-day  communications  which  the 
Christian  holds  with  his  God,  there  are  other  thoughts 
conveyed,  and  other  feelings  expressed,  than  those  which 
he  employs  in  his  every-day  converse  with  his  fellows. 
The  recesses  of  the  internal  man  are  laid  ojjen  ;  the  bias 
to  evil,  though  manifested  in  but  embryo  imaginings  and 
hidden  moods,  is  confessed  and  deplored  in  language  varied 
according  to  the  character  of  the  imagination  or  the  com- 
plexion of  the  mood ;  there  are  implorations  for  assistance 
against  enemies  felt,  though  invisible,  and  the  nature  of 
whose  ever-varying  assaults  is  suggestive  of  the  ever-vary- 
ing petition.  The  circumstance,  too,  that  it  is  God  who  is 
addressed,  gives  a  peculiarity  to  the  style.  We  walk  erect 
in  the  presence  of  our  fellows ;  and  as  it  is  the  privilege 
of  our  species  to  walk  erect,  shame  to  the  low  and  mean 
natures  that  do  otherwise !  But  is  there  any  one  who  can 
prostrate  himself  before  his  Maker  in  a  humility  too  pro- 
found ?  All  revelation,  too,  with  its  vast  breadth  of  mean- 
ing,— that  breadth  which,  the  more  we  examine  it,  expands 
the  more,  —  is  composed  of  but  the  elements,  the  materials 
of  prayer;  and  an  intercourse  with  God  for  a  thousand 
lifetimes  united  would  not  suffice  to  employ  them  all. 
Prayer  is  so  mighty  an  instrument  that  no  one  ever 
thoroughly  mastered  all  its  keys.  They  sweep  along  the 
infinite  scale  of  man's  wants  and  of  God's  goodness.  But, 
comparatively  at  least,  this  instrument  has  been  mastered ; 
it  is  mastered  to  a  considerable  degree  by  every  converted 
man.      He  acquii-es   the  vocabulary  of  the   closet   as   the 


prayer:  the  true  and  the  counterfeit.       355 

])roper  language  of  the  state  of  which  he  has  become  a 
t\ee  denizen,  and  his  fellow-citizens  recognize  it  as  their 
common  tongue.  The  Scotch  officer  was  not  altogether 
ignorant  of  it ;  and  to  the  positive  existence  of  such  a 
language  the  anecdote  of  his  experiment  on  the  Highlander 
owes  its  point. 

To  the  Christian  possessed  of  the  language  of  the  closet 
we  very  decidedly  oppose  the  mere  Moderate,  by  whom 
that  language  has  not  been  acquired.  Nay,  we  go  further. 
We  affirm  that  the  ability  of  recognizing  this  language 
through  that  sympathy  which  soul  holds  with  soul,  and 
that  perception  through  which  experience  recognizes  its 
kindred  experience,  are  elements,  and  no  unimportant 
ones,  of  the  present  controversy.  We  would  deem  a 
Christian  jDcople  fully  justified  in  rejecting  every  clergy- 
man in  whose  prayers  they  did  not  recognize  this  language. 
We  know  there  are  good  men  who  write  their  prayers. 
We  are  aware  that  Knox  wrote  prayers  for  the  rude  and 
untaught  people  of  Scotland,  whom  it  was  his  high  and 
honorable  vocation  to  civilize  and  instruct;  but  the  lan- 
guage in  which  they  were  w^ritten  was  the  heart-stirring 
language  of  the  closet.  They  were  altogether  different 
from  the  things  we  censure,  —  those  pieces  of  labored 
feebleness,  whose  polish  is  but  the  polish  of  baldness,  — 
things  that  are  not  prayers,  but  the  semblances  of  prayers, 
—  not  substance,  but  the  reflections  of  substance,  —  the 
mere  echoes  of  hearts  that  reverberate  because  they  are 
hollow.  And  the  difference  can  be  well  felt.  It  can  be 
tried  by  the  test  of  the  Scotch  officer.  On  grounds  such 
as  these  we  again  repeat  our  remark,  —  we  repeat,  that  "  it 
has  been  long  held  by  the  people  of  Scotland,"  and  held 
justly,  "that  prayers  laboriously  polished  in  the  study  ere 
repeated  by  rote  in  the  pulpit,  —  fine  addresses  to  Deity 
smoothed  up  with  the  same  small  care  which  sonneteers 
bestow  on  odes  to  their  mistresses'  eyebrows,  —  are  in  real- 
ity very  poor  sort  of  things,  —  mere  embodiments,  in  most 
instances,  of  an  inefficient  world-hunting  Moderatisra,  that 
plays  at  sentence-making." 


356  MR.  ISAAC   TAYLOR   ON   THE 


MR.   ISAAC   TAYLOR   ON    THE    INDEPENDENCE   OF   THE 
CHURCH. 

Nothing  proper  to  a  Church  and  State  system,  says  the 
celebrated  author  of  "Ancient  Christianity,"  in  his  work 
on  "  Spiritual  Despotism,"  published  some  years  since,  — 
"  nothing  proper  to  a  Church  and  State  system  demands 
the  subserviency^  of  the  Church  to  the  State.''''  Such  is  the 
decisive  declaration  of  one  who,  himself  from  principle  an 
Episcopalian,  yet  laments  with  the  greatest  earnestness 
over  the  "fatal  surrender"  which  the  Church  of  England 
has  made  to  the  State  of  her  spiritual  prerogative  and 
independence,  —  a  step  which  he  regards  as  in  a  preemi- 
nent degree  the  source  of  those  perilous  circumstances  by 
which  she  is  surrounded.  And  in  this  we  believe  him  to  be 
not  far  from  the  truth.  A  Church  may  be  subject  to  many 
corruptions,  and  may  tolerate  many  abuses ;  but  until  she 
divests  herself,  as  the  Church  of  England  has  in  great 
measure  done,  of  the  powers  of  government  and  the  reins 
of  discipline,  —  of  her  spiritual  independence  and  free- 
dom,—  she  possesses  within  herself  that  machinery,  a  due 
exercise  of  which  may  accomplish  her  purification  and  re- 
vival. Depi-ived  of  these  powers,  however,  the  well-spring 
of  her  vitality  is  poisoned ;  she  floats  a  helmless,  mastless 
hulk  upon  the  waves,  "at  the  merciment,"  to  quote  the 
words  of  Mr.  Taylor,  "  of  her  foes  and  of  her  friends." 

We  are  strongly  of  opinion,  from  the  incidental  expres- 
sions made  use  of  by  this  deservedly  esteemed  writer  in 
the  work  referred  to,  that,  were  his  attention  turned  to 
the  present  contest  of  our  Church  with  the  civil  despotism 
of  the  day,  he  would  have  no  hesitation  on  which  side  to 
take  his  stand.  He  would  hesitate  not — as  he  presumes, 
with  reference  to  the  Church  of  England,  that  no  "prac- 
tical and  impartial"  man  would  hesitate  —  "to  give  his 
aid  in  restoring  to  the  Established  Church  that  indepen- 


INDEPENDENCE   OF   THE   CHURCH.  357 

DENCE  and  those  vital  functions  which  Christianity  de- 
mands for  her,"  and  which  the  Scottish  Reformers,  in 
contradistinction  to  those  of  England,  secured  to  us  in 
a  manner  conformable  to  God's  word,  and  which,  they 
fondly  imagined,  would  preserve  us  from  further  molesta- 
tion. Thus  he  speaks  of  the  English  Establishment:  — 
"Too  long  she  has  consented  to  be  mocked  with  the 
empty  forms  of  independence ;  and  is  now  so  placed  that 
she  must  assert  and  regain  her  lost  prerogatives,  or  fall 
lower  still.  The  assembling  of  convocation  effectively  at 
her  own  discretion,  and  for  the  exercise  of  substantial 
functions,  —  the  unprompted  election  of  her  bishops,  and 
the  annulling  of  lay  encroachments  upon  ecclesiastical 
property  [an  evil  that  we  also  wish  to  see  'annulled'],  — 
are  obvious  points  of  that  Church  reform  which  the  course 
of  events  demands."  How  refreshing  is  it,  in  a  Church 
which,  with  all  her  boasted  emblazonries  of  rank  and  pre- 
tension, is  trodden  under  foot  by  an  iron  despotism,  to 
meet  with  one  of  such  congenial  sentiments  with  ourselves, 
who  can  proclaim  aloud,  with  equal  boldness  and  ability, 
her  degraded  and  enslaved  condition,  and  the  means 
necessary  to  be  adopted  for  reinstating  her  in  that  status 
winch  it  behooves  the  Church  of  Christ  to  occupy !  Mr. 
Taylor  advocates  an  infusion  of  lay  blood  into  the  organic 
government  of  the  Church,  —  the  complete  disenthralment 
from  the  bonds  of  state  supremacy ;  and  looks  forward  to 
the  accomplishment  of  these  reforms,  along  with  a  correc- 
tion of  the  abuses  of  patronage,  —  such  an  amendment  of 
the  whole  system  "as  would  concede  something  to  the 
people,  and  absolutely  exclude  the  merchandise  of  souls," — 
as  fitted  to  acquire  for  the  Establishment,  what  she  is  not 
now  possessed  of,  the  submissive  and  cordial  reverence  and 
regard  of  her  people.  He  does  not,  indeed,  acknowledge 
the  scriptural  right  of  the  people  to  a  direct  voice  in  the 
appointment  of  their  ministers.  But  tlie  conclusion  at 
which  he  arrives  on  this  point  from  anotlier  source  of 
evidence  may  have  equal  weight  with  those  who   make 


858  ISAAC    TAYLOR    ON    CHURCH    INDEPENDENCE. 

primitive  practices  and  ancient  fathers  the  "gods  of  their 
idolatry ; "  and  it  is,  so  far  as  it  goes,  very  satisfactory,  as 
coming  from  one  who  has  made  the  history  of  the  pristine 
churches  a  subject  of  deep  and  fruitful  study,  and  whose 
predilections  are  all  in  favor  of  the  hierarchical  system  of 
the  Church  of  England.  "  In  fact,"  he  says,  "  though  not 
to  be  traced  in  the  canonic  writings,  the  popular  voice 
and  suffrage  in  the  election  of  the  bishop  unquestionably 
obtained  a  very  early  prevalance,  and  those  who  absolutely 
excluded  the  will  of  the  people  in  the  choice  of  their 
pastors,  although  not  reproveable  by  the  letter  of  Scrip- 
ture, yet  oppose  one  of  the  most  ancient  and  universal  of 
ecclesiastical  usages." 

In  his  summary  of  scriptural  proofs  concerning  the  dif- 
ferent forms  of  Church  government,  we  scarcely  think  that 
Mr.  Taylor  at  all  grapples  with  or  meets  the  arguments 
and  facts  by  which  the  system  of  Presbytery  may  be  main- 
tained from  the  word  of  God.  He  no  doubt  expresses  in 
an  able  manner  the  incoherent  and  destructive  nature  of 
Congregationalism  ;  but  he  seems  chary  of  coming  into 
too  close  collision  with  the  advocates  of  Presbyterianism. 
We  leave  it,  however,  for  our  readers  to  judge  how  far  he 
has  in  the  following  passage  portrayed  the  leading  charac- 
teristics of  the  two  Establishments  of  this  country.  "If  a 
choice  were  to  be  made  between  two  actual  forms  of  Pres- 
byterianism and  Episcopacy,  whereof  the  first  admits  the 
laity  to  a  just  and  apostolic  place  in  the  management  and 
administration  of  the  Church,  while  the  second  absolutely 
rejects  all  such  influence,  and  at  the  same  time  retains  for 
its  bishops  the  baronial  dignities  and  the  secular  splendor 
usurped  by  the  insolent  hierarchs  of  the  middle  ages,  then, 
indeed,  the  balance  would  be  one  of  a  different  sort;  and, 
unless  there  were  room  to  hope  for  a  correction  and  reform 
of  political  prelacy,  an  honest  and  modest  Christian  mind 
would  take  refuge  in  the  substantial  benefits  of  Presbyteri- 
anism." We  are  inclined  to  believe  that  the  writer  has  in 
these  lines,  perhaps  altogether  unwittingly,  been  trying  his 


DEFENCE   ASSOCIATIONS.  359 

hand  at  portrait-painting;  and  that  the  contrast  between 
the  "counterfeit  presentment  of  the  two  brothers"  tells 
by  no  means  against  our  northern  Establishment. 


DEFENCE  ASSOCIATIONS. 

It  was  natural,  as  the  crisis  of  the  conflict  approached,  that  the 
Evangelical  party  throughout  the  parishes  of  Scotland  should  adopt 
such  an  organization  as  might  enable  them  most  effectively  to  pro- 
mote their  principles  and  vindicate  their  position.  Hence  arose 
the  Defence  Associations  which  figure  in  the  following  article.  —  Ed. 


It  was  an  important  step,  not  for  our  country  only,  but 
for  the  whole  human  species,  when  our  humbler  country- 
men of  old,  associating  for  mutual  defence,  surrounded  a 
few  mean  villages  with  rude  walls,  and  procured  their 
Charters  of  Community  from  monarchs  jealous  of  the 
proud  barons,  their  oppressors.  Our  historians,  especially 
the  earlier  ones,  have  dwelt  almost  exclusively  on  the  hard- 
fought  battles  of  our  country,  on  the  barbarous  feuds  of 
proud  and  haughty  barons,  the  intrigues  of  courtiers,  and 
the  negotiations  of  statesmen.  Our  j^oets  and  romancers 
have  revelled  amid  the  uncouth  splendor  of  courts  that 
were  but  conning  their  first  lessons  in  politeness,  and  have 
exhausted  their  power  of  narrative  and  description  on  the 
barbaric  pomp  of  tournaments,  and  the  spirit-stirring 
scenes  of  war  and  the  chase.  Transactions  and  events  of 
an  immensely  more  important  character  have  been  passed 
over  undescribed.  In  tracing  to  its  earliest  origin  the  lib- 
erty of  our  country,  we  would  pass  over  kings,  barons,  and 
knights,  —  all  that  has  been  permitted  hitherto  most  to 
occupy  the  memory  and  fill  the  imagination,  —  and,  de- 
scending from  the  castle  and  the  palace,  we  would  select, 
as  the  true  benefactors  of  the  present  time,  the  denizens  of 


860  DEFENCE   ASSOCIATIONS. 

a  humbler  sphere.  Wo  would  pick  out  the  rude  mechanic 
plying  his  simple  art  in  his  humble  cottage,  behind  the 
rampart  of  undressed  stone  which  his  own  hands  had 
assisted  to  rear, — his  blackjack  of  hammered  iron,  and  his 
round  head-piece  suspended  from  the  rafters  above,  —  his 
sword  crossed  over  his  long  bow,  and  his  six-eln  spear 
stretching  athwart  the  wall.  Burgher  does  not  sound  half 
so  nobly  as  knight;  but  it  is  to  the  burgher,  not  to  the 
knight,  that  we  owe  the  liberty  of  the  subject,  the  manu- 
mission of  the  vassal,  the  emancipation  of  the  slave,  human- 
izing commerce,  equal  laws,  tlie  arts  of  social  life,  and  the 
first  asylums  and  baiting-places  of  the  Reformation.  The 
association  of  the  oppressed  many  against  the  grinding  des- 
potism of  the  powerful  few  has  been  peculiarly  blessed  in 
almost  all  the  states  of  Europe,  and  nowhere  more  emphat- 
ically blessed  than  in  our  own  country.  Nay,  had  we  to 
furnish  appropriate  emblems  of  the  despotism  over  which, 
in  their  long  struggle,  the  people  ultimately  triumphed, 
and  of  the  liberty  which  they  at  length  achieved,  —  if  we 
could  scarce  find  a  fitter  symbol  of  the  one  than  some 
proud  baronial  castle,  with  its  huge  gray  walls  thinly 
sprinkled  with  iron-barred  windows,  its  overhanging  bar- 
tizans, its  deep  moat,  its  jealous  drawbridge,  its  cruel 
dungeon  hid  deep  from  the  air  and  the  sun,  its  court  of 
summary  trial,  and  its  grave-besprinkled  mound  of  execu- 
tion, —  we  could  scarce  devise  a  more  appropriate  repre- 
sentative of  the  other  than  some  humble  town,  rudely  but 
strongly  walled  round,  its  hardy  inhabitants  trained  to 
arms,  and  bound  by  the  most  solemn  engagements  recipro- 
cally to  defend  each  other,  its  straw-covered  council-house 
rising  in  the  midst  of  its  one  irregular  street,  its  narrow 
and  crowded  dwellings  clamorous  with  the  sounds  of  me- 
chanic labor,  a  few  armed  burghers  watching  at  its  gate, 
and  the  sweeping  declivity  below  thickly  besprinkled  with 
its  minute  and  multitudinous  patches  of  cultivation. 

Now  that  a  crisis  has  arisen  in  which  it  is  necessary  for 
the  people  of  Scotland  again  to  unite,  as  of  old,  it  is  well 


DEFENCE    ASSOCIATIONS.  361 

to  consider  the  kind  of  arms  wliich  it  is  most  their  safety 
and  interest  to  wield,  and  the  cLiss  of  enemies  against 
which  they  wouhl  do  well  first  to  direct  them.  Our  ances- 
tors commenced  ojierations  by  drawing  closely  together, 
and  snrrounding  their  humble  dwellings  with  a  wall.  They 
would  scarce  have  succeeded  in  obtaining  their  charters 
of  community  had  they  applied  for  them  in  the  character 
of  defenceless  serfs.  Their  descendants  must  also  draw 
closely  together;  but  wall-building  will  scarcely  avail 
them.  It  must  be  their  work  rather  to  demolish  walls 
erected  already. 

Our  Church  Defence  Associations  may  be  made  to  sub- 
serve a  very  important  purpose.  We  have  had  occasion 
to  remark,  oftener  than  once,  that  in  many  of  our  rural 
districts  political  opinion  is  still  a  serf  bound  to  the  soil. 
It  is  not  men,  in  most  of  these,  to  whom  the  Reform  Bill 
has  actually  extended  the  franchise ;  it  is  acres.  It  is  not 
farmers,  but  groups  of  fields,  estimated  in  the  laird's  rent- 
book  at  fifty  pounds  per  annum,  that  enjoy  the  privilege 
of  returning  representatives  to  Parliament.  The  tenant 
is  but  the  mouth-piece  of  his  farm,  and  the  proprietor  his 
prompter.  Now,  without  being  particularly  political,  we 
must  just  say  that  this  is  not  at  all  what  should  be.  Opin- 
ion should  not  be  a  serf  bound  to  the  soil.  It  is  men,  not 
acres,  who  should  enjoy  the  frnnchise.  It  is  not  according 
to  the  British  constitution,  either  as  it  was  or  is,  that  a 
proprietor  should  possess  as  many  votes  as  he  possesses 
farms;  and  it  is  well  to  remember  that,  as  for  every  privi- 
lege which  man  enjoys  man  shall  have  to  give  an  account, 
the  tenant,  though  he  can  transfer  his  vote  to  his  landlord, 
cannot  transfer  to  him  his  responsibility.  It  may  be  quite 
right,  if  he  so  will  it,  that  he  should  vote  with  his  land- 
lord ;  but  it  is  at  least  equally  right  that  he  should  vote 
with  him  only  because  he  wills  it,  and  is  convinced  in  his 
own  mind  that  his  determination  is  a  good  one.  In  a 
|)oint  of  singular  advantage  for  observatio!i,  we  have  been 
often  astonished  to  see  hov,-  i?nplicitly  even  a  rack-rented 

31 


862  DEFENCE   ASSOOIATIOXS. 

tenfiiitry  seemed  to  liave  taken  it  for  granted  tliat  tlie  vote 
was  their  proprietor's,  not  theirs.  Reguhirly  as  term-day 
came  round,  the  rent,  to  its  last  shilling,  had  to  be  pro- 
duced ;  and,  had  bank-agents  been  as  unaccommodating 
as  the  laird,  almost  every  Martinmas  might  have  witnessed 
its  roups  of  live-stock  and  utensils;  and  yet,  notwithstand- 
ing, every  dissolution  of  Parliament  saw  the  votes  of  an 
oppressed  tenantry  thirled  to  the  manor-house.  Our 
Church  Defence  Associations  are  admirably  suited  to  cor- 
rect this  evil.  There  are  many  merely  political  questions 
on  which  it  is  difficult  for  plain  men  to  form  an  opinion,  — 
many,  too,  in  which  there  is  so  equal  a  balance  of  right 
and  wrong,  that  one  might  hesitate  to  encounter  a  con- 
tingent evil,  however  slight  its  character,  in  deciding  either 
for  or  against  them.  But  no  true  Presbyterian  in  Scot- 
land, however  little  skilled  in  politics,  will  experience  any 
difficulty  in  making  up  his  mind  on  the  Church  question, 
in  its  bearing  on  scenes  such  as  that  of  Culsalmond  and 
Marnoch.  Directed  and  impelled  by  our  Defence  Associa- 
tions, we  trust  to  see  it  insinuate  its  wedge  between  tlie 
Intrusionist  landlord  and  the  votes  of  his  Non-Intrusionist 
tenants ;  and  we  are  of  opinion  the  attention  of  our 
friends  cannot  be  too  strongly  directed  to  this  point.  The 
wealthy  commoner  who  reckons  fifty  farms  on  his  roll,  and 
the  farmer,  his  tenant,  who  rents,  at  fifty  pounds  per 
annum,  one  of  the  smallest  of  them,  are  placed  politically 
on  exactly  the  same  level,  and  it  is  surely  high  time  that 
both  the  proprietor  and  the  farmer  should  begin  to 
know  it.  • 

All  other  Scottish  parties  have  been  already  drawn  out 
into  the  political  arena;  they  have  been  already  tasked  to 
their  full  strength,  each  against  its  antagonist  party ;  nor 
has  there  been  a  meVins  left  untried  by  which  the  power 
of  any  one  of  them  might  be  increased.  But  the  Presby- 
terianism  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  has  not  yet  been 
drawn  out  in  its  character  as  such.  It  has  been  lost  amid 
other  and  lower  parties;  and,  now  that  it  is  gathering  to  a 


DEFENCE   ASSOCIATIONS.  363 

head  in  its  own  proper  form,  it  may  be  well  conceived  of 
as  a  new  force  marching  into  the  heart  of  a  lengthened 
fray.  We  have  referred  to  a  kind  of  political  vis  inertim. 
Mr.  John  Dunlop,  in  his  masterly  work  on  association,  tells 
ns,  in  illustrating  this  principle,  that  in  1789,  when  the 
whole  existing  state  of  society  in  France  seemed  ready  to 
explode,  and  when  the  assembling  of  the  States-General 
was  commenced,  the  great  body  of  the  common  people 
remained  such  careless  spectators  of  the  universal  commo- 
tion and  struggle  which  was  impending,  that  few  of  them 
took  the  trouble  of  voting  at  the  elections,  and  that  where 
a  thousand  were  expected  to  come  forward,  not  perhaps 
fifty  made  their  appearance.  There  has  been  more  of  this 
vis  inertim  among  the  Presbyterians  of  the  Church  of 
Scotland  than  perhaps  any  other  body  in  the  kingdom. 
But  we  have  in  the  present  controversy  a  force  potent 
enough  to  overcome  it;  and  it  will,  we  trust,  be  a  main 
object  with  our  Church  Defence  Associations  to  bring  this 
force  to  bear.  The  passive  must  be  converted  into  the 
active  throughout  the  country.  The  "grave  livei*s"  of 
Scotland  have  never  been  drawn  out  in  any  purely  seculnr 
quarrel ;  nor  has  the  country,  in  any  of  her  popular  st  i-ug- 
gles,  presented  a  very  imposing  attitude  without  tiiem. 
They  have  ever  constituted  her  sti'ength.  The  poet  of 
Scotland  who  so  truly  described  himself  as  "  prompt  to 
learn  and  wise  to  know,"  but  whose  wisdom  and  knowledge 
too  little  influenced  his  own  unhappy  career,  could  see 
clearly  from  what  scenes  the  glory  of  his  country  arose, 
and  in  what  class  her  strength  mainly  consisted.  Too 
little  serious  himself,  he  could  yet  recognize  in  her  humble 
men  of  devotion  and  prayer  her  "  guard  and  ornament," 
her  best  wealth  in  her  times  of  peace,  and  her  encircling 
"wall  of  fire"  in  her  day  of  trouble.  We  can  trust  that, 
with  the  Divine  blessing,  on  which  all  must  depend,  our 
fast-forming  associations  will  show  that  he  did  not  over- 
estimate tlieir  importance. 


364  FORESHADOWING  s. 


FORES  II  ADO  WINGS 


Whateyee  God  in  his  wisdom  may  have  designed  as 
the  termination  of  the  existing  troubles,  it  were  well  that 
for  the  present  at  least  the  Church  and  people  of  Scot- 
land should  be  prepared  for  a  time  of  extremity.  Nor  do 
we  entertain  any  fear  of  inducing  a  timid  feeling  among 
the  assertors  of  the  present  quarrel  by  referring  to  the 
imminence  of  the  danger.  Some  of  our  readers  will  per- 
haps remember  the  remark  of  Burns  on  one  of  the  criti- 
cisms of  a  friend,  who  suggested  that  he  should  strike  out 
from  his  sublime  address  of  the  Bruce  the  alternative  of 
the  "gory  bed,"  as  impolitic  in  the  circumstances.  It 
tended  to  make  death  frightful,  said  the  critic,  and  pre- 
sented a  discouraging  and  disagreeable  image,  which  the 
skilful  general  would  scarce  venture  to  suggest  to  his 
troops  on  the  eve  of  a  great  battle.  Burns  knew  better. 
"It  Avas  the  battle  of  Bannockburn,"  said  the  poet,  "  which 
they  were  going  to  fight;  and  the  man  v/ho  would  have 
shrunk  at  tlie  image  of  the  'gory  bed'  was  no  man  fitted 
to  fight  there." 

It  is  imperatively  necessary  that  the  country  be  thor- 
oughly aroused.  Its  chance  of  escaping  from  the  present 
imminent  danger  (if  in  such  a  matter  we  may  speak  of 
chance)  will  be  in  exact  proportion  to  its  sense  of  it.  All 
must  have  remarked  how  very  difficult  it  is  to  realize  ex- 
traordinary events  as  things  of  probable  occurrence  in  one's 
own  times.  We  acquaint  ourselves  with  matters  in  their 
ordinary  course,  —  with  the  common,  every-day  affairs  of 
life,  —  and  give  to  our  anticipations  of  the  future,  from  an 
inherent  law  of  our  nature,  the  complexion  of  what  we 
may  term  our  average  experience  of  the  present.  And 
hence  the  difficulty  to  which  we  refer.  Occurrences  simi- 
lar to  those  more  striking  events  of  history  which  belong 
to  experience  in  its  extended  sense,  but  not  to  our  own 


FORESHADO  WINGS.  365 

individual  experience,  are  almost  never  anticipated  as 
probable ;  nay,  even  their  very  possibility  is  held  doubtful. 
A  sort  of  instinctive,  unreasoning  ske})ticisni  declares 
against  them.  Many  of  our  readers  must  remember  with 
what  feelings,  some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  they  were 
in  the  habit  of  regarding  the  narratives  of  those  terrible 
visitations  of  the  plague  which,  as  late  as  the  middle  half 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  used  from  time  to  time  to  tliin 
the  population  of  Britain.  Visitations  of  so  frightful  a 
character  were  viewed  as  belonging  exclusively  to  the  past, 
—  so  exclusively,  that  their  return  seemed  scarce  possible. 
It  seemed  well-nigh  as  probable  that  the  country  should 
again  see  that  John  Miltonwho  had  to  remove  from  his 
house  in  Bunhill  Fields  during  the  ravages  of  the  pest, 
as  the  ravages  of  the  pest  itself;  and  sad  stories  of  dead 
bodies  dragged  on  hurdles  to  the  nearest  hillock,  and 
thrown  into  hastily-scooped  graves,  —  of  whole  hamlets 
left  desolate, —  of  strange  barriers  arresting  the  progress 
of  the  disease  in  crowded  cities,  —  barriers  such  as  slender 
runnels  of  water  or  cr6ss  lanes,  —  of  clouds  of  vapor  stand- 
ing up  like  erect  walls  over  the  infected  districts,  —  of 
cottages  burnt  to  the  gi'ound,  for  all  their  inmates  had 
perished,  and  all  within  reeked  with  the  rank  steam  of 
infection  ; — these  and  many  such  narratives  seemed  merely 
dreams  of  tradition,  —  not  sober  realities,  but  a  sort  of 
misty  extravagances,  \vhich,  however  connected  with  the 
past,  no  one  could  associate  with  times  so  sober  as  the 
present.  Southey,  in  one  of  his  earlier  prose  writings, 
ventured  to  urge  the  probability  of  the  return  of  such 
strange  and  terrible  visitations,  and  the  suggestion  was 
regarded  as  wild  and  unnatural  —  as  the  somewhat  outre 
stroke  of  a  bold  writer  straining  after  effect.  We  have 
lived,  however,  to  see  cholera  stiike  down  a  hundred 
millions  of  the  human  species ;  w^e  have  seen  it,  regulated 
hj  its  own  eccentric  and  inexplicable  Laws,  ravaging  our 
cities  and  villages,  as  if  its  districts  had  been  assigned  to 
it  by  the  rule  and  the  measuring  line.     Clouds  of  murky 

31* 


366  FORESHADOWINGS. 

vapor  have  stood  up  for  days  and  weeks  together  over 
our  towns,  as  if  the  destruction  that  was  pressing  upon 
them  had  taken  to  itself  a  visible  form ;  cottages  have 
been  again  burnt  to  the  ground  for  the  same  sad  cause  as 
of  old ;  and,  as  the  flames  arose,  we  have  seen  their  light 
flashing  on  the  lonely  graves  of  their  perished  inmates,  — 
graves  scooped  out  of  wooded  hillocks,  far  from  church- 
yards and  every  accustomed  place  of  sepulture,  or  on  the 
skirts  of  moiFutain-streams,  or  the  verge  of  solitary  sea- 
shores. Events  similar  to  those  which  we  could  scarce 
credit  as  possible  in  connection  with  our  own  country  and 
our  own  time  some  eighteen  or  twenty  years  ago,  are  now 
registered  in  our  experience  as  portions  of  our  country's 
recent  history.  And  it  is  well  to  remark  that  this  sort 
of  instinctive  skepticism  applies  as  certainly  to  signal 
atrocities  perpetrated  by  men,  as  to  extraordinary  visita- 
tions in  the  providence  of  God.  A  repetition  of  the  Irish 
massacre  seems  as  impossible  now  as  a  visit  from  the  pest 
appeared  twenty  years  ago.  Men  are  still  slow  to  believe 
that  our  civil  courts  in  the  nineteenth  century  may  be 
found  as  decidedly  opposed  to  Christ,  his  cause  and  gov- 
ernment, as  they  were  in  the  seventeentli.  The  atrocities 
of  forced  settlements,  though  we  see  them  occurring 
around  us,  still  seem  rather  to  belong  to  a  former  age 
than  to  the  present  time;  and  the  latest  era  of  persecution 
for  conscience'  sake  continues  to  appear  as  if  it  had  closed 
when  William  III.  landed  in  Torbay.  It  were  well  for 
the  country  to  be  thoroughly  aroused  from  the  indifler- 
ency  wdiich  this  natural,  though  not  the  less  irrational, 
skepticism  induces.  The  revolutionary  cycle  seems  fast 
revolving  in  Britain.  In  Scotland,  at  least,  we  now  stand 
on  the  very  brink  of  some  of  the  more  intolerable  evils 
by  which  great  convulsions  are  invariably  preceded ;  and 
in  a  very  few  months,  if  the  Presbyterianism  of  the  coun- 
try bestir  not  itself  all  the  more  vigorously,  it  shall  have 
to  witness,  as  of  old,  the  disestablishment  of  the  national 
religion,   and   the   ejection  from    their  chaiges   of  all    its 


FORESHADOWINGS.  367 

better  pastors.      There  are  more  than  the   controversies 
of  the  seventeenth  century  reviving. 

To  the  people  in  the  present  crisis  we  have  but  one  ad- 
vice :  they  must  arouse,  associate,  prepare  themselves.  If 
they  but  stand  still,  it  will  be  to  witness  the  infliction  of 
one  of  the  widest  spread  desolations  that  ever  yet  visited 
their  Church  or  country.  There  were  only  two  hundred 
parish  churches  shut  np  on  the  first  Sabbath  of  the  winter 
of  1662,  through  the  policy  of  Commissioner  Middleton, 
backed  by  the  tyranny  of  Charles.  The  policy  of  our 
Hopes  and  Aberdeens,  backed  by  Sir  Robert  Peel,  threat- 
ens to  shut  up  at  least  twice  that  number,  and  to  render 
the  others  of  as  little  value  to  the  community  as  the 
churches,  occupied  by  the  curates  during  the  disastrous 
reign  of  Prelacy.  There  can  be  no  doubt  that  the  people 
icill  be  thoroughly  roused  ;  but  it  is  all-important  that  they 
should  be  roused  in  time.  It  is  all-important  that  they 
should  be  roused  rather  to  prevent  evil  than  to  avenge  it. 
They  err  egregiously  who  hold  that  one  vigorous  blow, 
through  which  the  Evangelism  of  Scotland  would  be  thrust 
beyond  the  pale  of  her  Establishment,  would  restore  quiet 
to  the  country.  It  would  restore  to  it  such  quiet  as  the 
similar  blow  dealt  to  it  by  Middleton  did,  —  a  quiet  com- 
pared with  which  all  the  popular  ebullitions  of  either  the 
present  century  or  the  last  would  be  scarce  worthy  of 
being  regarded  as  popular  ebullitions  at  all.  But  it  would 
be  well,  surely,  for  both  the  Church  and  her  enemies  that 
the  experiment  should  not  be  made.  The  fight  at  present 
is  on  the  breach.  Better  that  it  should  be  decided  there 
than  by  blowing  up  the  citadel  at  a  later  stage. 


368  TRANSLATIONS   INTO   FACT. 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

PART    FIRST. 

An  act  of  Parliament  is  confessedly  a  dry-looking  docu- 
ment ;  a  collection  of  acts  forms  a  dull,  unreadable  book. 
If  we  double  the  amount,  the  fatigue  of  perusal  necessarily 
doubles;  the  density  increases  in  due  proportion  as  the 
volumes  spread  over  the  shelves,  and  reaches  its  acme 
as  they  multiply  into  a  complete  law  library.  A  heavy 
atmosphere  presses  upon  the  dust  that  gathers  over  the 
folios  of  Themis,  and  its  dense  va})ory  folds  reflect  a  mirage 
of  only  slumbrous  images.  The  tall,  weighty  columns,  each 
with  its  single  broad  margin  patched  over  with  notes,  like 
a  pond-edge  studded  with  bogs;  the  sections  and  para- 
graphs doled  out  by  the  tale,  as  if  the  framers  had  been 
fearful,  seemingly  not  without  cause,  of  repeating  the  same 
provision  twice,  —  here  and  there  the  blunder  actually  com- 
mitted, notwithstanding  the  precaution,  —  here  and  there 
the  opposite  mistake  of  a  provision  running  counter  to  the 
rest,  turned,  as  it  were,  thwartways  in  the  passage,  as  logs 
sometimes  do  when  floated  down  a  stream  ;  the  long,  loose, 
unmusical  sentences,  that  forget  themselves,  and  run  into 
paragraphs;  the  thick,  dense  words,  that  seem  selected 
with  the  express  design  of  eclipsing  the  meaning,  —  that 
at  least,  in  many  instances,  serve  admirably  to  eflect  the 
apparent  purpose;  the  glimmering  cross-lights  of  idea  that 
meet  the  student  at  every  turning,  with  all  the  perplexing 
bewilderment,  but  none  of  the  picturesqueness,  of  cross- 
lights  in  an  ancient  building;  the  equable,  slumbrous, 
Lethe-like  rumble,  rumble  of  the  style ;  the  general  resem- 
blance of  every  one  leaf  to  every  other,  —  of  page  to  page, 
of  section  to  section,  of  act  to  act;  and  then  the  enormous 
amount  of  the  whole,  —  one  fifty  pages  following  another 
fifty   pages,  —  the    bookbinder   interposing    his   fence    of 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  369 

pasteboard  and  calf  when  we  number  the  thousand, — then 
another  thousand  commencing, — then  another,  and  another, 
and  another,  —  and,  after  numbering  the  term  of  Methu- 
selah's years  twenty  times  told,  the  thousands  as  if  still  but 
beginning ;  —  truly  it  seems  no  way  wonderful  that  so 
many  lawyers  sliould  be  so  little  acquainted  with  law,  or 
that  they  should  find  it  so  much  easier  a  matter  to  Hsten 
to  the  decisions  of  the  dozen  arbitrary  legislators  of  the 
Court  of  Session,  than  to  plod  through  the  acts  of  the 
hereditary  and  representative  legislators  of  the  two  Houses 
of  Parliament.  It  is  easier  to  listen  to  decisions  than  to 
plod  through  acts;  just  as  it  is  obviously  easier  to  pick  up 
the  smattering  of  information  which  passes  current  in  the 
gossip  of  the  day,  than  to  ground  one's  self  thoroughly  in 
the  knowledge  which  is  to  be  derived  from  books.  "  Gigan- 
tic geniuses,  fit  to  grapple  with  whole  libraries,"  are  not 
geniuses  of  every-day  production  ;  but  men  qualified  to  col- 
lect news  occur  in  crowds,  go  where  we  may ;  and  hundreds 
of  the  class  write  "  solicitor,"  "  advocate,"  or  "  W.  S."  on 
their  door-plates,  and  attend  the  Parliament  House. 

But  if  it  be  thus  a  heavy  matter  to  read  law  as  stored 
up  in  huge  folios,  it  is  far  from,  being  a  heavy  matter  to 
read  it  as  written  on  the  face  of  a  country.  We  pass 
from  the  sign  to  that  which  the  sign  represents.  All  is 
cold  and  obscure  abstraction  in  the  one ;  all  is  breathing, 
animated  existence  in  the  other.  Let  us  take,  by  way  of 
example,  but  a  single  act,  —  the  act  through  which  Com- 
missioner Middleton  overturned  Presbyterianism  in  Scot- 
land. It  is  merely  a  piece  of  bad,  unideal  prose  in  the 
statute-book ;  but  what  a  deeply  interesting  though  fearful 
tragedy  of  many  scenes  does  it  not  appear  amid  the  hills 
and  fields,  and  in  the  towns  and  villages  of  our  native 
country !  Gibbets  rise  tall  and  black  over  assembled 
crowds;  and  we  see  in  the  hands  of  the  public  executioner 
gray-haired  men  of  God,  content  rather  to  die  than  deny 
their  Master.  The  churches  of  the  land  are  silent,  or  re- 
echo only  the  mutterings  of  a  debasing  superstition.     The 


370  TRANSLATIONS   INTO   FA^T. 

voice  of  psalms  mingles  on  the  hills  with  the  patter  of 
musketiy.  There  is  cold,  and  hunger,  and  violent  death, 
amid  yonder  rocks  and  moors,  and  in  those  solitary  dens 
and  caves.  Thousands  die  on  fields  of  battle,  or  are  forced 
into  exile,  immured  in  dungeons,  borne  away  to  be  sold 
as  slaves  in  the  colonies,  perish  in  tempests  chained  to  the 
sinking  wreck,  or  welter  under  flood-mark,  as  the  tide  rises, 
tied  down  amid  the  ware  and  tangle  of  the  shore.  There 
is  blood  everywhere,  as  in  the  land  of  Egypt  when  Moses 
called  up  the  first  plague.  Blood  in  council-chambers, — 
blood  on  the  boots  and  the  thumbkins,  —  blood  on  the 
ermine  of  the  judge,  —  blood  on  the  lawn  of  the  bishop, 

—  blood  on  the  scaflbld  and  the  headsman's  axe,  —  blood 
in  the  churchyard,  where  the  debased  criminal  and  the 
honored  martyr  are  huddled  together  in  a  common  grave, 

—  blood  beside  the  cottage  wall,  where  the  lonely  widow 
watches  the  corpse  of  her  murdered  husband.  The  rising 
sun  is  reflected  on  pools  of  blood,  that  thicken  amid  the 
hills  beside  new-made  graves ;  it  sets  upon  blood  freshly 
spilt  on  fields  strewed  with  yet  quivering  carcasses;  the 
Clyde  flows  sullenly  along  the  arches  of  Both  well,  and  the 
eddies  are  crimsoned  with  blood.  There  is  blood  every- 
where; and  the  cry  of  the  land  rises  to  Heaven.  How 
very  terrible  the  reading  of  this  iniquitous  act,  when  we 
thus  pass  from  the  statute-books  of  the  country  to  its 
history,  —  from  the  sign  to  the  thing  signified  !  We  peruse 
the  scene  a  little  longer.  An  empty  throne  appears  in  the 
distance;  a  bigot  king  wanders,  discrowned,  in  pitiable 
exile;  and  the  last  of  his  descendants  perishes,  in  scorn  and 
beggary,  in  a  foreign  land.  Take,  as  another  example,  the 
scarce  less  iniquitous  act  of  Queen  Anne,  and  peruse  it  in 
a  similar  manner.  A  dense  fog  of  indifferency  and  practi- 
cal error  creeps  over  the  grand  religious  institution  of  the 
country,  and  in  district  after  district  its  moral  influence 
becomes  more  than  neutralized  ;  for,  instead  of  ministering 
to  the  religious  fe(4ings  of  the  people,  it  but  serves  to  shock 
and  outrage   them.      Not  a  few  of  our  churches  become 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  371 

scenes  of  Aiolence  and  perjury;  frotn  not  a  few  of  our 
})ulpits  there  are  doctrines  promulgated  which  souls  cannot 
receive  and  live  ;  and  the  better  men  qf  the  country,  unable 
to  eject  those  who  buy  and  sell,  —  those  whose  traffic, 
darker  than  that  of  the  money-changers  of  old,  is  a  traffic 
in  men's  souls,  —  quit  in  sorrow  the  place  so  grossly  dese- 
crate<l.  One  humble  chapel  rises  after  another  amid  their 
liamlets,  where  they  worship  in  the  purity  and  freedom 
with  which  their  fathers  worshipped.  But  the  compara- 
tively indifferent  sink  into  yet  deeper  indifference.  No 
man  cares  for  their  souls ;  for  when  did  the  hireling  care 
for  his  flock  ?  The  evening  and  morning  hymn  is  silenced 
in  many  a  cottage.  Immorality  and  improvidence  come 
in  like  a  flood.  The  Sabbath  becomes  a  day  of  weariness, 
—  fit  preparation  for  its  becoming  a  day  of  toil.  The  old 
spirit  of  honest  independence  evaporates ;  for,  in  a  state 
of  slavery  to  vice,  the  whole  abject  feelings  of  the  slave 
are  induced ;  the  pauperism  of  the  country  multiplies  a 
hund)"ed-fbld,  and,  fierce  in  its  distress,  threatens  to  play 
the  footpad  with  our  capitalists  and  proprietary.  And 
when  at  length,  after  the  lapse  of  a  century,  the  spirit  of  a 
better  time  revives,  it  finds  but  a  mutilated  body  to  ani- 
mate,—  a  body  palsied  in  part,  —  shorn  of  not  a  few  of 
its  members,  and  bearing  within,  in,  alas  !  no  small  amount, 
the  seeds  of  corruption.  We  peruse  exactly  the  same 
statute,  in  an  abridged  form,  in  the  settlements  of  Marnoch 
and  Culsalmond  ;  and  what  honest  man  so  dull  as  to  miss 
its  true  meaning  in  digests  so  clear,  pointed,  and  concise? 

It  is  ever  an  important  matter  to  be  able  thus  to  trans- 
late written  laws,  if  we  may  so  speak,  into  overt  acts  and 
their  consequences.  It  is  a  higher  ability  in  its  perfection 
than  that  of  the  mere  lawyer;  it  is  the  ability  of  the 
profound  statesman  and  legislator.  All  men,  liowever, 
possess  it  in  some  degree  —  even  men  who  cannot  so  much 
as  read  written  law ;  and  it  is  to  the  general  difliision  and 
exercise  of  this  ficultythat  the  Church,  in  the  present  con- 
troversy, owes  the  support  of  so  preponderating  a  majority 


372  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

of  the  people.  If  lawyer-like  misinterpretation  of  statutes, 
or  the  calumnies  of  seven-eighths  of  the  public  press,  could 
have  misled  them,  they  would  have  been  all  on  the  other 
side.  Mr.  Robertson,  of  Ellon,  would  not  have  been  plau- 
sible, nor  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen  diplomatic,  in  vain ;  nor 
would  almost  all  have  seen  fallacies  deplorably  palpable  in 
the  arguments  of  Dr.  Cook,  and  in  the  utter  lack  of  solidity 
in  the  motion  of  Dr.  Muir.  It  was  the  general  ability  of 
translating  into  the  tangibilities  of  action  the  misinterpre- 
tation and  the  calumnies,  the  plausibilities  and  the  diplo- 
macy, the  arguments  and  the  motion,  that  rallied  her  sup- 
porters round  the  Church.  We  are  told  by  the  lawyers, 
for  instance,  that  spiritual  independence  in  connection  with 
the  Establishment  means  just  no  more  than  that  degree  of 
independence  which  the  Court  of  Session  now  chooses  to 
allow  her.  We  test  the  doctrine  by  the  tangibilities  of 
history, —  action  seen  retrosi>ectively,  —  and  find  that,  if  it 
be  true,  all  the  histories  of  our  Church  and  country  must 
be  false.  It  must  be  entirely  false  that,  in  the  long  battle 
of  the  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries,  the  Church 
was  ultimately  victor ;  it  must  be  false  that  the  charter 
granted  to  her  in  1592  is  still  unrepealed,  —  that  there  was 
a  revolution  settlement  in  her  favor,  or  that  an  act  for 
securing  the  independence  of  her  government  formed  a 
basis  of  the  treaty  of  union.  And  accordingly  we  find 
that,  by  a  strange  enough  fiction  of  law,  the  unreality  of 
all  this  is  actually  taken  for  granted  by  the  assertors  of  the 
doctrine,  and  that,  as  if  there  had  been  no  charter,  no  revo- 
lution settlement,  no  treaty  of  union,  they  argue  that  the 
Black  Acts  of  1584  are  still  in  force,  —  acts  which,  accord- 
ing to  even  Principal  Robertson,  were  repealed  only  eight 
years  after  their  enactment.  If  this  doctrine  be  true,  these 
statutes  are  still  the  law  of  the  Church,  and  all  the  rest  of 
her  history  is  a  lie.  And  to  what  do  the  calumnies  of  the 
press  amount  when  translated  into  events?  What  sort  of 
liglit  do  the  outrages  at  Marnoch  nnd  Culsnlmond  throw 
on  the  oft-repeated  assertion,  that  it  is  clerical  power,  not 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  373 

popular  right,  for  which  the  Church  is  contending?  What 
clerical  party,  on  the  meanest  and  most  grossly  palpable 
of  subterfuges,  were  content  to  increase  their  own  power 
at  the  expense  of  the  people  there  ?  And  in  what  party, 
on  the  other  hand,  did  the  people  recognize  their  best  and 
most  devoted  friends? 

A  similar  translation  of  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  bill  at 
once  fixes  its  character.  If  the  bill  be  a  desirable  bill,  then 
the  dilemma,  in  which  ministers  of  the  gospel  could  do 
only  one  of  two  things, —  either  outrage  their  own  con- 
science by  pronouncing  reasons  of  objection  to  be  good 
wliich,  fro  in  the  very  nature  of  things,  they  could  not 
know  to  be  either  good  or  otherwise,  or  of  outraging  the 
consciences  of  congregations  by  subjecting  them  to  forced 
settlements,  —  this,  we  say,  if  the  bill  be  desirable,  would 
be,  of  consequence,  a  desirable  dilemma.  We  have  read 
somewhere  of  the  Code  Napoleon,  that  in  at  least  one 
important  respect  it  differs  materially  from  the  statute- 
book  of  our  own  country.  The  bearing  of  our  statutes  on 
special  cases  is  fixed  by  decisions ;  the  laws  of  the  Code, 
on  the  contrary,  are  illustrated  by  examples.  Special  cases 
are  imagined  beforehand ;  and  it  is  the  part  of  the  magis- 
trate to  compare  with  these  the  cases  which  actually  occur, 
and  to  decide  accordingly.  Examples  conceived  on  a  sim- 
ilar principle  would  be  fatal  accompaniments  to  the  bill  of 
Aberdeen.  Nor  are  we  quite  sure  that  they  would  tell 
very  decidedly  in  favor  of  the  liberum  arhitrium.  There 
are  cases,  at  least,  in  which  even  it  would  translate  lamely 
enough  into  fact,  —  cases  in  which  presbyteries  and  synods 
might  be  as  free  from  the  necessity  of  perpetrating  forced 
settlements  as  Adam  was  free,  ere  the  Fall,  from  all  com- 
pulsion to  sin,  and  in  wliich  their  freedom  might  possibly 
be  not  better  employed.  At  all  events,  in  all  human  affairs 
the  balance  of  justice  wavers  least  when  there  are  efilcient 
checks  to  steady  it.  These,  however,  are  but  desultory 
remarks,  and  serve  merely  to  introduce  the  subject  which 
we  sat  down  to  illustrate.     It  is  our  purpose  to  attempt 

32 


374  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    PACT. 

translating  into  fact  one  or  two  of  the  plausibilities  of  Mr. 
Robertson,  of  Ellon,  one  or  two  of  the  arguments  of  Dr. 
Cook,  and,  perhaps,  one  or  two  of  the  assertions  of  Dr. 
Muir;  and  to  show  that  it  has  been  chiefly  through  a  tacit 
process  of  translation  of  the  kind  we  describe  that  tliey 
have  so  utterly  failed,  in  impressing  the  religious  portion 
of  the  community,  or  other  than  an  inconsiderable  portion 
of  the  Scottish  public  in  general.  We  are  told  that  Candid 
remarked  with  surprise,  in  the  Court  of  El  Dorado,  tliat 
the  hon  inots  of  the  king,  even  after  they  had  been  trans- 
lated, still  remained  hon  mots.  The  reverse  of  this  will  be 
found  to  be  exactly  the  character  of  the  principles  which 
we  intend  translating  into  fact.  They  decompose,  and 
become  mephitic  in  the  process,  — 

"  Woman  to  the  waist,  and  fair, 
But  ending  foul  in  many  a  scaly  fold." 


PART    SECOND. 

Corporal  Trim  translated  the  fifth  commandment  into 
fact  by  settling  on  his  aged  i3arents  the  full  half  of  his 
meagre  pay  as  a  soldier.  Intrusion  and  n  on -intrusion, 
patronage  and  anti-patronage,  are  things  equally  capable 
of  being  translated  into  fact;  nor  is  the  process  too  difficult 
a  one  to  be  mastered  by  men  well-nigh  as  humble  as  even 
the  corporal  himself  The  tangibilities  which  these  terms 
express  bear  upon  all.  The  country  may  have  its  tens  of 
thousands  on  whom  a  clergyman  has  never  been  intruded, 
and  its  hundreds  of  thousands  who  have  never  had  an 
opportunity  of  exercising  their  choice  in  the  selection  of  a 
clergyman  for  themselves;  but  it  does  not  contain  a  single 
individual,  to  whom  religion  is  anything,  whether  Church- 
man or  Dissenter,  who  is  not  living  in  a  certain  felt  relation 
to  some  one  or  other  of  the  tangibilities  of  intrusion  or 
non-intrusion,  patronage  or  anti-patronage.    We  ourselves, 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  875 

for  instance,  have  lived  at  difFerent  periods  of  our  life  in 
relation  to  them  all,  —  now  subjected  to  the  evils  of  an 
unmitigated  patronage,  now  participating  in  the  limited 
privileges  of  a  bare  non-intrusion  principle,  now  enjoying 
all  the  many  signal  advantages  of  free,  uncontrolled  choice. 
We  have  shared,  in  turn,  in  all  that  the  Church  is  contend- 
ing for,  and  in  all  she  is  contending  against ;  and  a  piece 
of  simple  narrative,  bearing  on  the  circumstances  of  each 
case,  may  at  once  serve  to  illustrate  our  meaning,  and  to 
show  not  only  how  very  important  the  principles  of  the 
present  controversy  are,  but  tlie  secret  also  of  the  people's 
thorouoh  understandino;  of  them. 

There  are  parishes  in  Scotland  which  contain  areas  of 
about  twelve  hundred  square  miles,  and  whose  parish 
churches  were  some  twenty  years  ago  removed  from  the 
parish  churches  in  their  nearest  neighborhood  by  a  long 
day's  journey.  AVe  resided  in  one  of  these  for  part  of  a 
twelvemonth,  ere  the  government  had  given  its  supple- 
mentary chapels  to  the  Highlands,  and  saw,  for  the  first 
time,  at  the  bottom  of  a  little  sandy  bay  that  opened  into 
the  boisterous  Atlantic,  a  Scottish  parish  church,  between 
which  and  the  nearer  places  of  worship  there  stretched 
forty  miles  of  wild  sea-coast  on  the  one  hand,  and  fifty 
miles  on  the  other.  A  stormy  sea  of  barren  hills  occupied 
the  interior;  and  the  eye,  in  passing  from  the  serrated 
peaks  and  gray,  dizzy  precipices  of  the  higher  grounds, 
encountered  scarce  anything  more  inviting  on  the  lower 
than  dark  moors,  and  still  darker  morasses,  —  long,  narrow 
plains  at  the  bottom  of  retiring  bays,  overblown  by  sand, 

—  and  rock-skirted  promontories  studded  with  stone.  It 
was  no  favorable  locality  for  illustrating  the  excellence  of 
the  Voluntary  principle.  All  the  more  respectable  sort  of 
]>eople  who  can  treat  themselves  on  Sabbaths  to  a  joint 
and  a  decent  suit  of  broa<lcloth  contrive  also  to  treat 
themselves  to  a  sermon;  but  —  alas  for  the  utterly  poor! 

—  ninetcen-twentieths  of  the  simple  inhabitants  of  tliis 
wild   district  could  treat  themselves  to   neither  Sabbath 


376  TRANSLATIONS   INTO   FACT. 

joints  nor  broadcloth.  For  at  least  one-third  part  of  every 
year  they  had  no  meal,  even,  and  scarce  any  potatoes;  — 
their  chance  of  provisions  for  the  day  depended  almost 
exclusively  on  the  uncertain  fishing  of  the  night;  and  they 
had  to  rest  wholly  for  their  religious  provision  on  the 
National  Establishment.  Voluntaryism  had  done  nothing 
for  them,  and  could  do  nothing.  But  what  had  the  Estab- 
lishment done  ?  It  had  given  them  a  qualified  minister, — - 
a  man  who  had  been  tried  for  a  very  gross  crime  by  the 
General  Assembly,  but  at  a  period  when  the  General  As- 
sembly was  the  one  court  in  Europe  in  which  no  such 
accusation  was  in  any  instance  followed  by  conviction ; 
and  so,  though  all  the  parish  held  him  guilty,  he  was  still 
a  qualified  minister.  He  was  naturally  a  dull  man,  of 
somewhat  less  than  average  intellect,  based  on  a  strong 
animal  nature;  and  his  pul})it  ministrations  were  perhaps 
the  most  miserable  things  of  the  kind  ever  heard,  —  pieces 
of  disjointed  patchwork,  badly  read,  borrowed  in  part 
without  judgment,  and,  where  original,  written  without 
care  or  thought.  It  was  impossible  to  listen  to  them. 
Regarded  in  a  religious  light,  they  were  desecrations  of 
the  Sabbath  ;  in  an  intellectual,  mere  lullabies  to  set  men 
asleep.  The  manse  was  one  of  the  houses  in  the  parish  in 
which  no  family  worship  was  kept,  save  for  one  week  in 
the  year, — the  week  in  which  the  sacrament  was  dis- 
pensed, —  and  then,  in  order  to  appear  as  decent  as  possible 
in  the  eyes  of  one  or  two  low-country  ministers  wdio 
usually  came  to  assist  on  such  occasions,  the  family  were 
called  together,  and  the  form  gone  through.  We  saw  in 
one  instance  an  act  of  discipline  performed  in  the  parish. 
The  minister  had  come  home  from  his  morning  walk  fierce 
with  passion,  —  actually  bellowing.  His  two  elders  were 
instantly  sent  for,  to  hold  a  session ;  and  three  boys  were 
brought  before  them  to  undergo  the  censure  of  the  Church. 
The  little  fellows  had  met  their  minister  in  his  walk,  and 
had  deemed  it  excellent  sport  to  remind  him,  somewhat 
too  circumstantially,  of  the  offence  for  w^hich,  a  few  years 


TRANSLATIONS   INTO    FACT.  377 

before,  he  liad  been  tried  by  the  General  Assembly.  And 
such  was  an  average  specimen  of  the  respect  entertained 
for  him  by  his  parishioners.  We  cannot  give  the  dai-ker 
shades  of  this  picture ;  we  shall  not  even  hint  at  them. 
Be  it  enough  to  say,  that  such  was  the  only  clergyman  in 
a  tract  of  country  considerably  more  than  thirty  miles 
square,  and  that  we  had  no  alternative,  for  some  thirty 
Sabbaths  together,  but  that  of  either  attending  his  church, 
or  of  attending  no  church  at  all.  To  have  heard  sermon 
anywhere  else  would  have  involved  a  two-days'  journey. 
Here,  then,  so  far  as  we  ourselves  and  ninety-nine  hun- 
dredths of  the  poor  parishioners  were  concerned,  the  worst 
tangibilities  of  intrusion  were  involved.  Arguments  trans- 
lated into  facts  the  most  stubborn  bore  equally  against  the 
plausibilities  of  Voluntaryism  on  the  one  hand,  and  the 
sophisms  of  Moderatism  on  the  other.  The  reservoir  pro- 
vided here  at  the  public  expense  was  but  an  accumulation 
of  filth,  breathing  miasma  and  infection.  Then,  why  care 
lor  its  maintenance  ?  say  the  Voluntaries.  Because  there 
was  none  other  in  the  locality,  and  the  people  perished  for 
thirst.  Then,  why  now  endanger  its  existence?  say  the 
Moderates.  Because,  existing  as  a  mere  tank  of  stagnant 
corruption,  it  mattered  not  to  the  surrounding  country 
whether  it  existed  or  no ;  or,  we  should  perhaps  rather 
say,  its  existence,  in  the  circumstances,  was  a  j^ositive  evil. 
-We  exert  ourselves,  therefore,  not  to  break  down  the 
reservoir,  but  to  purify  it,  —  to  cleanse  it  from  the  feculent 
poison  which  has  long  reeked  and  festered  in  it,  and  to  fill 
it  with  the  pure  and  living  stream,  that  all  around  may 
drink  and  be  refreshed.  This,  however,  is  not  quite  what 
we  intended  to  say.  We  set  out  by  remarking  that  the 
country  does  not  contain  a  single  individual,  to  whom 
religion  is  anything,  who  is  not  living  in  a  certain  felt 
relation  to  the  tangibilities  of  intrusion  or  non-intrusion  ; 
and  we  thus  present  the  reader  with  one  passage  in  our 
experience  of  the  tangibilities  of  intrusion.  Need  we  say 
that   gladly   would  we    have    exercised    the   veto  on  the 


878  TRANSLATIONS   INTO   FACT. 

appointment  of  this  Highland  minister  of  the  Moderate 
school,  or  that  all  his  people  would  eagerly  have  joined 
with  us?  Of  the  latter,  we  may  just  remark,  that  they 
were  a  simple-hearted,  inoffensive  race  of  men,  not  indif- 
ferent to  the  blessings  of  the  gospel,  and  not  too  unintelli- 
gent to  distinguish  it  from  its  counterfeits. 

We  changed  the  scene  for  a  district  in  the  south  of 
Scotland,  not  five  miles  from  the  Scottish  capital.  It 
would  be  worth  while  inquiring  how  it  should  almost 
always  happen  that  the  common  country  people  in  the 
neighborhood  of  large  towns  are  less  intelligent,  not  only 
than  the  common  people  of  the  towns  themselves,  but  also 
than  the  common  country  23eople  who  reside  in  more 
sequestered  localities.  Such,  however,  in  our  individual 
experience  at  least,  we  have  ever  found  to  be  the  fact. 
We  have  seen  shaded  maps,  on  which,  from  the  statistics 
of  crime  as  furnished  by  the  criminal  courts  of  the  several 
districts,  a  darker  or  lighter  shade  was  given  to  particular 
localities.  Here,  where  crime  most  abounded,  the  shade 
was  intensely  deep;  there,  where  it  was  somewhat  less 
frequent,  a  lighter  tint  spread  over  the  provinces ;  yonder, 
where  it  was  less  frequent  still,  the  tint  was  still  lighter ; 
and  a  funt  twilight  tinge  indicated  a  yet  lower  degree  of 
delinquency  th;in  characterized  even  the  lowest  of  the 
otlier  three.  Could  the  comparative  ignorance  and  intelli- 
gence of  tlie  several  provinces  of  a  country  be  marked  out 
in  a  similar  manner,  we  are  convinced  that  well-nigh  all 
our  large  towns  would  present  the  singular  appearance  of 
specks  of  conjparative  light,  encircled,  if  we  may  so  speak, 
by  halos  of  darkness ;  and  that  a  medium  tint,  here 
darker,  there  lighter,  would  spread  over  the  country  be- 
yond. In  the  southern  locality  to  which  we  had  now 
removed  we  found  ourselves  within  the  very  circle  of  one 
of  these  tenebrific  halos.  There  was  a  stagnant  vacancy 
of  mind  among  the  people,  —  a  slumbrous  lack  of  intelli- 
gence,—  and  at  least  as  strongly-marked  an  indifference 
to   religion   as   to  all   kinds  of  useful  secular   knowledge. 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  379 

Carters,  common  laborers,  and  farm-servants  formed  the 
great  bulk  of  the  population,  with  a  thin  sprinkling  of  me- 
chanics, petty  dealers,  and  j^ublic-house  keepers.  Church- 
going  among  the  carters  and  laborers  seemed  to  liave 
entirely  worn  out;  the  farm-servants  were  better  but  by  a 
single  degree  ;  and,  whatever  one  might  have  thought  of 
religion  itself,  there  was  certainly  little  to  afford  pleasure 
in  contemplating  the  more  palpable  effects  of  the  want  of 
it  here.  The  men,  dirty  and  unwashed,  and  in  their  week- 
day clothes,  might  be  seen  loitering  about  their  hamlets 
every  fair  Sabbath  morning,  more  especially  about  the 
public  houses,  to  which,  in  the  villages,  according  to  the 
too  faithful  description  of  Cowper,  almost  every  tenth  step 
conducted  the  traveller.  The  Sabbath  evening  passed  in 
brawling  and  coarse  debauch.  Not  the  Highland  parish 
itself  presented  to  the  Voluntary  a  field  more  hopeless, 
though,  of  course,  from  an  entirely  different  cause.  In  the 
southern  locality  there  was  money  enough  consumed  on 
the  taverner  to  have  supported  half  a  dozen  clergymen  ; 
but  while  there  existed  a  strong  appetite  for  what  the 
taverner  had  to  give,  there  existed  no  appetite  whatever 
for  what  the  clergyman  had  to  give.  The  supply  was  fitted 
to  the  demand,  on  the  true  Adam  Smith  principle,  and 
there  were  no  efforts  made  at  the  time  to  lessen  the  one 
kind  of  appetite,  or  to  create  the  other.  The  parish  had, 
of  course,  its  qualified  minister,  —  a  respectable,  indolent, 
not  unsensible  Moderate,  within  whose  bounds  of  superin- 
tendence one  could  have  lived  for  years  not  in  the  least 
in  danger  of  his  coming  to  the  knowledge  of  the  fact. 
We  never  saw  him,  though  we  resided  a  considerable  part 
of  two  twelvemonths  in  his  parish,  except  in  the  pulpit. 
There,  however,  we  have  heard  liim  read,  rather  drowsily, 
a  sort  of  essays  called  sermons,  in  which  there  was  now 
and  then  a  respectful  allusion  to  Christianity  as  something 
very  good,  and  neither  nonsense  nor  heresy,  but  in  which 
flat  and  unprofitable  vacancy  w^as  occupied  by  but  the 
uncertain  echoes  of  ill-defined  thought,  and  in  which  no 


380  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

Saviour  was  offered  to  a  perishing  people,  and  no  scheme 
of  salvation  unfolded  to  them  through  his  blood.  A 
respectable  rural  congregation  —  small,  compared  with  the 
population  of  the  parish,  but  not  very  small  absolutely  — 
dozed  around  him  in  the  pews,  or  in  waking  fancy  sowed 
their  turnips  or  reaped  their  corn.  In  relation  to  ourselves, 
at  least,  the  case  was  one  of  decided  intrusion.  We  would 
have  vetoed,  if  we  could,  this  inoffensive  Moderate,  of 
whom  nothing  worse  could  be  said  than  that  he  was 
of  no  manner  of  use ;  we  would  have  vetoed  him,  and 
have  taken  very  conscientiously,  when  we  had  done,  the 
necessary  declaration.  In  this  southern  district,  however, 
less  than  a  journey  of  two  days  sufficed  to  bring  us  out 
and  home  from  other  churches  than  the  parish  one.  Dr. 
M'Crie  preached  within  fewer  than  five  miles  of  us ;  and 
so,  quitting  our  state-provided  minister,  we  became  Dis- 
senter for  the  time.  One  example  more  of  a  similar  kind. 
The  Voluntary  controversy  had  burst  out  in  its  first 
fary,  and,  with  certainly  no  long-cherished  prejudice  in 
fivor  of  Establishments  to  mislead  us,  —  with  very  con- 
siderable experience,  too,  of  the  working  of  at  least  one 
Establishment,  —  we  had  quietly  taken  our  side.  We  had 
gone  to  reside  in  a  southern  burgh,  filled  at  the  time  with 
the  buzz  of  politics  and  the  din  of  controversy.  Volun- 
taryism mustered  strong,  and  an  incipient  Chartism  still 
stronger;  and,  not  particularly  enamored  of  the  spirit  of 
either  principle,  we  naturally  sought  the  parish  church  in 
preference  to  any  of  the  three  chapels  of  the  place.  We 
had  no  previous  knowledge  of  the  party  to  which  the  cler- 
gyman belonged.  We  knew  merely  that  he  was  a  cler- 
gyman of  the  Establishment;  and  establisJunent  at  that 
period  was  the  great  watchword  of  the  party  to  which  we 
had  attached  ourselves.  We  found  that  he  was  a  gentle- 
man,—  certainly  not  gross,  and  by  no  means  either  unac- 
complished or  uninformed.  There  was  a  considerable 
amount  of  elegance  in  his  discourses.  A  laudable  degree 
of  care  had  been  obviously  bestowed  on  the  composition. 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  381 

The  thinking,  if  neither  bold  nor  original,  had  enough  of 
vigor  to  solicit  the  attention  of  some  of  his  more  intelligent 
people,  —  almost  all  conservatives,  —  and  his  perorations, 
generally  neat,  bore  always  some  complimentary  reference 
to  a  Saviour,  and  to  some  inexplical)le  benefit  wliicli  He 
had  bestowed  upon  mankind.  But  what  that  benefit  was, 
or  how  mankind  might  avail  themselves  of  it,  this  respect- 
able gentleman  neither  knew  himself,  nor  could  he  tell  it 
to  others.  His  theology  rose  no  higher  than  that  of  Blair; 
his  ability  of  enforcing  it  was  considerably  lower;  and  had 
we  been  set  to  pick  out  in  all  literature,  sacred  and  secular, 
the  compositions  which  his  discourses  least  resembled,  we 
would  have  selected  the  Epistles  of  St.  Paul.  It  was  pity 
for  him!  He  was  generous  and  hospitable,  though  a  little 
imprudent^  perhaps ;  for  he  sometimes  gave  dinners  on  Sab- 
bath, —  a  thing  which  no  Moderate  minister  should  do  in 
these  latter  evil  days,  however  much  inclined.  He  could 
occasionally  give  his  pulpit,  too,  to  men  of  his  own  party 
so  much  more  extreme  than  himself,  that  even  his  congre- 
gation—  a  sufilciently  Moderate  one  —  were  accustomed 
to  complain.  The  only  sermon  and  prayers  we  overheard 
from  a  clergyman  confessedly  not  Unitarian  in  which  even 
the  name  of  Christ  did  not  occur,  we  heard  delivered  from 
his  pulpit,  but  not  by  himself.  We  continued  to  attend 
his  church  for  nearly  two  months  ;  but,  beginning  to  find 
that  establishments  may  be  countenanced  at  too  high  a 
price,  we  left  him  for  the  time,  and  w^ent  over  to  the  Vol- 
untaries. Nor  was  the  change,  in  this  instance  at  least, 
very  advantageous ;  but  if  the  animating  spirit  was  not 
superior,  the  form  of  words  was  at  least  more  sound.  We 
need  scarce  add,  that  our  relation  to  this  accomplished 
and  highly  qualified  minister  was  the  intrusion  relation; 
that  we  would  have  vetoed  him  if  we  could,  and  taken  the 
declaration.  But  it  is  high  time  to  illustrate  the  opposite 
principle,  — the  non-intrusion  one,  as  opposed  to  the  anti- 
patronage  principle  on  the  one  hand,  and  to  the  intrusionist 
principle  on   the  other.     A  single  instance  may  serve  to 


382  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

translate  it  into  fact.  We  have  lived  under  the  ministry 
of  men  whom  we  would  not  have  chosen,  and  Avhom  we 
could  not  have  rejected. 

A  country  parish  far  from  towns,  with  a  simple  rural 
population  considerably  out  of  the  way  of  the  influence 
of  our  lighter  periodical  literature,  and  with  the  Shorter 
Catechism  stereotyped  on  their  general  tone  of  thinking ; 
—  a  good  sincere  man,  of  moderate  ability,  laboring  among 
them  in  the  ministry,  walking  conscientiously  his  round 
of  duty,  and  useful  and  acceptable  in  that  round,  not  so 
much  from  any  intrinsic  fitness  in  himself,  as  from  his 
practical  acquaintance  with  that  scheme  of  salvation  which 
He  who  adapts  all  his  means  to  the  accomplishment  of 
his  ends  has  thoroughly  accommodated  to  the  wants  and 
wishes  of  the  human  heart.  We  have  lived  in  such  par- 
ishes, and  under  the  ministry  of  such  men.  We  have 
remarked,  too,  that  such  parishes,  left  to  their  free  choice, 
would  select  for  themselves  such  men.  The  higher  order 
of  minds  would  scarce  fit  them  equally  well ;  —  a  principle 
which  applies  in  a  similar  degree  to  all  literature  and  all 
philosophy.  Between  the  loftier  and  the  humbler  minds 
tliere  must  exist  an  intermediate  class;  wanting  which, the 
lowlier  could  receive  no  benefit  from  the  loftier.  Burke 
was  unintelligible  frequently  in  even  the  House  of  Com- 
mons ;  and  until  Colin  Maclaurin  brought  dow^n  the 
"  Principia"  of  Newton  to  the  still  high  level  of  the  pre- 
vious flights  of  philosophy,  men  of  no  ordinary  intellectual 
stature  had  to  take  its  extraordinary  merits  on  trust.  It  is 
on  identically  the  same  principle  that  in  a  simple  country 
district  the  gospel  would  be  more  acceptable  and  more 
useful  from  a  Boston  than  from  a  Butler.  And  hence  the 
importance  of  permitting  men,  in  such  matters,  both  to 
judge  and  choose  for  themselves.  The  mind  requires  its 
particular  fit  as  certainly  as  the  body,  and,  when  enlight- 
ened by  Christian  principle,  takes  its  own  measure  best. 
AVhat  we  meant  to  remaik,  however,  was,  that  in  such 
parishes  we   have  felt  ourselves  living  in  relation  to  the 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  38B 

tangibilities  of  the  mere  non-intrusion  principle.  Left  to 
ourselves,  we  would  have  perhaps  chosen  men  of  a  higher 
intellectual  order,  —  men  such  as,  in  Edinburgh  for  in- 
stance, all,  whether  Churchmen  or  Dissenters,  can  virtually 
choose  for  themselves,  in  virtue  of  their  living  in  relation 
to  the  tangibilities  of  the  anti-patronage  principle ;  but 
never  surely  would  we  have  vetoed  such  men. 


PART    THIRD. 

John  Knox  might  have  been  an  English  bishop  had  he 
willed  it.  It  is  matter  of  history  that  the  offer  of  a  diocese 
was  made  him  at  the  special  request  of  Edward  YI.,  backed 
by  his  council ;  and,  could  honors  and  emoluments,  and 
the  favor  of  royalty,  have  biassed  the  reformer,  Puseyisra 
would  now  be  looking  up  to  him  as  one  of  her  transmitters 
of  the  apostolic  virtue.  He  would  have  formed  a  con- 
necting link  in  the  long  electric  chain  through  which  she 
charges  her  surplice-coated  vessels  of  the  altar  with  the 
subtile  and  fiery  fluid  which  already  lights  tapers  there, 
and  bids  fair  ere  long  to  kindle  up  fagots.  But  Knox 
himself,  in  the  supposed  case,  like  all  the  better  bishops, 
his  contemporaries  and  friends,  would  have  been  utterly 
unconscious  of  what  he  conveyed.  The  tractors  of  the 
mesmerist  take  as  much  note  of  the  planetary  fluid  which 
they  are  said  to  transmit,  as  he  would  have  done  of  the 
apostolic  ichor.  We  are  told  by  Dr.  M'Crie  of  the  Lati- 
mers  and  Cranmers,  his  associates,  that  they  were  "  stran- 
gers to  those  extravagant  and  illiberal  notions  which  were 
afterwards  adopted  by  the  fond  admirers  of  the  hierarchy 
and  liturgy.  They  would  have  laughed,"  says  the  histo- 
rian, "  at  the  man  who  would  have  seriously  asserted  that 
the  ceremonies  constituted  any  part  of  the  'beauty  of 
holiness,'  or  that  the  imposition  of  the  hands  of  a  bishop 
was  essential  to  the  validity  of  ordination.  They  would 
not  have  owned  that  person  as  a  Protestant  who  would 


384:  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

have  ventured  to  insinuate  that  where  this  was  wantinor 

o 

there  was  no  Christian  ministry,  no  ordinances,  no  Church, 
and  perhaps  —  no  salvation."  Nor  are  we  left  to  guess  at 
the  opinions  of  Knox  on  the  subject.  In  the  concluding 
chapter  of  the  "  First  Book  of  Discipline  "  —  a  work  hastily 
drawn  up,  but  of  which  the  well-matured  materials  must 
have  revolved  as  thought  in  the  mind  of  the  reformer  for 
years  —  we  are  told  that  the  Popish  priesthood,  "  having 
received  no  lawful  calling  to  the  holy  ministry,  are  utterly 
devoid  of  either  power  or  authority  to  administer  the 
sacraments  of  Christ."  For  it  is  "  not  the  clipping  of 
crowns,"  it  is  added,  "  nor  the  crossing  of  fingers,  nor  the 
blowing  of  those  dumbe  dogges  called  the  bishops,  nor  yet 
the  laying  on  of  their  hands,  that  maketh  true  ministers 
of  Christ  Jesus."  What  then?  Certain  it  is  that  what 
Rome  itself  did  not  possess,  Rome  could  not  have  con- 
ferred on  others.  But  how  are  true  ministers  made?  Hear 
the  reformer  himself.  "By  the  Spirit  of  God,  first  of  all, 
inwardly  moving  the  heart  to  seek  to  enter  into  the  holy 
calling  for  Christ's  glory  and  the  profite  of  his  Kirk ;  there- 
after by  the  nomination  of  the  people,  the  examination 
and  approval  of  the  learned,  and  public  admission  by  both 
the  Church  and  the  flock."  Assuredly  a  more  likely  mat- 
ter!—  a  better  scheme,  obviously,  than  the  clipping  or 
crossing  process,  the  blowing  of  the  "  dumbe  dogges,"  or 
the  laying  on  of  their  hands.  Knox  lived  three  centuries 
ago ;  but  we  are  quite  content  to  stake  his  masculine 
understanding  against  that  of  Newnuan  and  Pusey  united, 
giving  them  all  the  odds  of  the  world's  progress  into  the 
bai-gain. 

Now,  there  are  great  truths  embodied  in  this  singularly 
pregnant  sentence  of  the  reformer,  and  very  admirably  do 
they  translate  into  fact.  They  describe  adequately  tlie 
qualified  minister^  in  the  only  rational  definition  of  the 
term,  —  a  man  qualified  to  be  useful  in  his  high  walk  of 
duty,  because  called  to  it  by  God  himself,  chosen  by  the 
jjcople,  and  admitted  by  the  Church,     We  sketched  in  our 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT.  385 

last,  as  specimens  of  a  numerous  class,  three  several  clergy- 
men under  whom  we  had  been  living  at  different  times  in 
the  intrusion  relation,  and  described  them  as  all  qualified 
ministers  according  to  the  Moderate  definition.  One  of 
the  statements  of  Dr.  Cook,  in  the  anti-patronage  debate 
of  last  General  Assembly,  fully  bears  us  out.  The  con- 
fessed leader  of  his  party  rose  to  say,  that  "absolute 
l^atronage  had  never  been  known  in  this  country."  There 
was  laughter,  as  well  there  might  be,  from  the  opposite 
benches,  and  cries  of  "Marnoch!"  "Marnoch!" — "Will 
the  gentlemen  hear  but  my  explanation?"  said  the  reverend 
Doctor,  somewhat  testily.  "  It  will  remove  all  ground  for 
the  merriment  they  have  manifested.  Can  a  patron  go 
elsewhere  but  to  a  man  who  has  affixed  to  him  the  stamp 
of  the  Church's  approbation  ?  No  man  can  be  brought 
into  a  living  whom  the  Church  has  not  solemnly  and 
carefully  examined,  and  declared  fit  for  the  work  of  the 
ministry."  And  to  exactly  the  same  efifect  is  the  doctrine 
maintained  by  Mr.  Robertson,  of  Ellon.  It  is  on  this 
principle,  he  holds,  that  the  late  Presbytery  of  Strathbogie 
did  right,  not  wrong,  in  giving  the  qualified  minister 
Edwards  to  the  parish  of  Marnoch.  It  is  on  this  principle 
that,  nicely  conscientious,  he  cannot  sustain  mere  dissent 
on  the  part  of  the  people  as  an  adequate  ground  for  reject- 
ing a  presentee,  and  demands,  therefore,  tangible  reasons 
of  objection  on  which  he  may  sit  and  judge.  His  entire 
hostility  to  the  veto  is  founded  on  this  principle,  —  the 
principle  that  all  the  licentiates  and  all  the  ministers  of 
the  Church  must  be  held  qualified,  unless  the  contrary  can 
be  established;  just  as  in  the  eye  of  the  laAV  all  men  must 
be  held  innocent  of  crime  unless  they  can  be  proven  guilty. 
And  on  nearly  a  similar  basis  did  Dr.  Muir  found  his  motion 
in  the  General  Assembly  of  1839.  The  fundamental  prin- 
ciple of  the  party  involves,  when  translated  into  fact,  either 
the  great  and  palpable  falsehood  that  all  the  ministers  and 
all  the  licentiates  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  are  qualified 
to  edify  the  body  of  Christ,  and,  of  necessity,  not  only 

33 


386  TRANSLATIONS    INTO    FACT. 

members  of  that  body  themselves,  but  also  peculiarly  fitted 
for  their  calling  by  God  himself;  or  the  equally  palpable 
falsehood  that  the  Christian  people  have  no  other  measure 
of  duty,  with  respect  to  what  and  whom  they  hear,  than 
the  ability  of  church  courts  to  detect  delinquency  and 
eri'or.  We  draw  bolt  and  bar  every  night,  and  set  a  guard 
in  our  streets,  in  the  belief  that  there  may  be  thieves  and 
men  of  violence  abroad.  Fling  open  your  doors,  says 
Moderatism,  and  dismiss  the  watch.  The  millions  of  the 
country  are  all  honest  and  inoffensive,  except  the  few  hap- 
less individuals  who  liave  been  convicted  of  crime  in  the 
High  Court  of  Justiciary,  and  either  thrust  out  of  the 
world  or  banished  the  kingdom. 

We  have  opposed  the  priest-making  of  Puseyism  to  the 
process  through  which,  according  to  Knox,  true  ministers 
of  Jesus  Christ  are  made.  The  one  is  all  sheer  material- 
ism,—  "crossing,"  "clipping,"  "blowing,"  and  the  "laying 
on  of  hands."  The  very  basis  of  the  other  is  spiritual. 
But  it  is  not  all  spiritual.  It  is  in  part  spiritual,  in  part 
intellectual,  and,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  negatively 
moral ;  and  it  will  be  found  that  it  is  the  merely  negatively 
moral  and  intellectual  portions  of  it  which  Moderatism 
selects,  and  that  the  spiritual  is  altogether  rejected.  It 
approaches  the  Puseyite  scheme  to  the  nearest  degree 
possible  in  the  circumstances ;  but  in  one  very  important 
respect,  each  tried  by  its  own  standard,  it  falls  materially 
below  it. 

"We  cannot  try  men's  hearts,"  said  the  old  statesman, 
when  passing  judgment  on  the  favorite  of  a  friend  who 
had  been  recommended  as  faithful,  but  rejected  as  incom- 
petent,—  "we  cannot  try  men's  hearts,  but  we  can  at  least 
catechize  their  heads."  Now,  there  is  a  provision  in  the 
scheme  of  Knox  for  the  catechizing  of  the  head.  The 
approbation  of  learned  ministers,  appointed  for  the  purpose 
of  examination,  is  a  sine  qua  non  to  admission.  Character, 
too,  in  the  negative  sense,  is  held  to  be  at  least  equally 
important.      "It  is  to  be  observed,"  says    the    reformer, 


TRANSLATIONS   INTO   FACT.  387 

"that  no  person  noted  with  publique  infaraie  be  either 
promoted  to  the  regiment  of  the  Church,  or  retained  in 
ecclesiastical  adniinistration."  And  such,  in  the  constitut- 
ing of  a  true  ministry,  was  the  part  given  to  church  courts, 
in  contradistinction  to  the  part  assigned  in  the  same  work 
in  the  first  instance  to  the  Spirit  of  God,  and  the  part 
assigned  to  the  people  in  the  second.  The  Church,  ac- 
cording to  the  Puseyite  scheme,  deals  with  the  material- 
isms of  ordination,  reckoning  on  a  necessarily  accompany- 
ing virtue  ;  the  Scottish  Church,  in  her  courts,  according 
to  somewhat  less  than  one-half  the  scheme  of  Knox,  deals 
v/ith  matters  equally  tangible  and  evident, — matters  of 
doctrine,  acquirement,  and,  in  the  low  judicial  sense  of  the 
term,  character.  Dr.  Pusey  and  his  friends  give  ns  the 
evidence  of  our  senses  for  the  crossing,  the  blowing,  and  the 
laying  on  of  hands.  Dr.  Cook  and  his  friends,  selecting 
one  portion  of  the  scheme  of  Knox,  profess  equally  to  give 
ns  the  evidence  of  our  senses  for  the  literature,  the  theol- 
ogy, and,  if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  the  lack  of  char- 
acter positively  bad.  Both  deal  equally  with  tangibilities; 
but  there  is  this  striking  difference  between  them  :  the 
tangibilities  in  the  case  of  Puseyism,  viewed  in  connection 
with  its  own  ostensible  beliefs,  are  fraught  with  a  necessnry 
virtue.  In  virtue  of  his  baptism,  the  priest  is  a  regenerated 
man;  in  virtue  of  his  ordination,  —  we  apologize  to  our 
readers  for  using  such  terms,  but  they  are  those  of  the 
party,  —  in  virtue,  we  say,  of  his  ordination,  he  is  both 
qualified  to  regenerate  others,  that  is,  to  baj)tize  them,  and 
io  feed  their  souls  loith  the  body  of  the  Lord,  —  that  is,  to 
administer  to  them  the  sacrament  of  the  Supper.  Mod- 
eratism  is  less  consistent.  It  does  not  hold  that  baptism 
is  regeneration;  it  does  not  hold  that  the  sacrament  of  the 
Supper  is  the  body  of  the  Lord ;  it  does  not  hold  that  any 
of  those  tangibilities  on  which  it  insists  —  literature,  the- 
ology, or  negative  character — is  what  the  sacraments  are 
not  —  co7iverslon.  It  holds  —  for  in  the  circumstances  it 
is  impossible   it  should  hold  otherwise  —  it  holds  that  a 


388  TEANSLATIONS    INTO   FACT. 

fully  qualified  and  accomplished  minister  —  one  who, 
according  to  Dr.  Cook,  cannot,  in  the  nature  of  things, 
be  intruded,  no,  not  into  a  Culsalmond  or  a  Marnoch, 
seeing  that  the  "  Church  has  affixed  to  him  the  stamp  of 
her  approbation,"  and  whom  Mr.  Robertson  could  not  con- 
scientiously  reject  in  virtue  of  any  rejection  on  the  part 
of  the  people  —  may  be,  notwithstanding,  an  unconverted 
man,  practically  unacquainted  with  the  gospel  himself,  and 
with  neither  wish  nor  will  to  urge  the  acceptance  of  it 
upon  others. 

But  though  such  be  the  consistency  of  Moderatism, 
not  such  was  the  scheme,  nor  such  the  views,  of  Knox. 
Church  courts  were  left  to  deal  with  facts  and  arguments, 

—  to  catechize  the  head  and  the  life  of  the  j^resentee.  To 
the  people  a  part  at  least  equally  important  was  assigned, 
and  in  which,  resting  as  it  did  between  God  and  their  con- 
science, the  Church  too  well  knew  her  duty  to  interfere. 

"Christ  the  Head  of  every  man!"  There  is  a  duty, 
doubtless,  which  the  Church  owes  to  her  adorable  Head, 
and  to  the  people  her  members.  But  in  no  degree  does 
that  duty  supersede  the  duty  which  every  individual 
member  owes  to  Christ  as  his  Head  ;  and  his  responsibility 
for  what  and  how  he  hears  is  a  responsibility  which  he 
cannot  roll  over  upon  any  Church.  Churches,  however 
false  and  detestable,  are  never  to  be  summoned  to  the  bar 
of  judgment.  Their  portion  is  in  this  world  exclusively. 
The  tyrants  of  the  Inquisition  must  be  there,  —  the  assas- 
sins of  St.  Bartholomew's  day,  —  the  bloodhounds  of  the 
Irish  massacre,  —  the  murderers  of  Hamilton,  and  Wishart, 
and  Walter  Mill,  —  the  kindlers  of  the  flames  of  Smith- 
field,  —  the  iron-hearted  persecutors  of  the  Piedmontese, 

—  all  who  in  the  cause  of  Rome  pursued  to  the  death  the 
saints  of  the  living  God.  But  Rome  herself  will  not  be 
there.  Her  judgment  shall  be  in  this  world.  Long  ere 
the  great  white  throne  shall  be  set,  or  the  books  opened, 

—  ere  the  sea,  and  death,  and  hell,  shall  give  up  their  dead, 
— •  must  her  place  be  void   among  the  nations,  —  a  dark 


TRANSLATIONS    INTO   FACT.  389 

and  silent  blank,  where  there  shall  no  light  shine  and  no 
voice  be  heard,  and  from  which,  for  ages  and  centuries, 
sliall  the  smoke  of  her  burning  ascend ;  while  around  and 
over  shall  the  great  voice  of  much  people  be  heard,  prais- 
ino-  God  "for  his  righteous  judgments"  in  "avenging  the 
blood  of  his  servants  at  her  hand."  Nor  will  the  Scottish 
Episcopal  Church  stand  at  that  awful  bar.  Not  Rome 
herself  wears  a  redder  surplice,  nor  do  her  hands  smell 
more  rankly  of  murder.  But  her  portion  will  be  assigned 
her  in  this  present  world  also.  One  Church  only  shall 
abide  the  day  of  the  Lord's  coming,  —  that  Church,  of  all 
climes  and  all  ages,  which  shall  comprise  all  saints,  and  the 
roll  of  whose  members  is  the  Book  of  Life.  It  is  as  indi- 
viduals, each  man  apart,  that  all  shall  have  to  stand  at  the 
bar  of  final  judgment ;  and  hence  the  necessary  recognition 
of  the  will  of  the  people  in  all  for  which  the  people  shall 
have  to  answer  there.  Hence,  too,  the  solemn  bearing  of 
the  doctrine  of  Christ's  Headship  on  the  existing  contro- 
versy, not  only,  and  not  chiefly  even,  in  its  connection 
with  the  Scottish  Church,  but  in  its  bearing  on  every  one 
of  the  Church's  members  individually.  To  Christ,  as  his 
Head  and  King,  must  every  man  render  an  account  of  how 
and  what  he  hears.  And  hence  the  peculiar  fitness  of  the 
enlightened  and  truly  Christian  principle  of  Knox.  Mark 
the  close  adaptation,  the  one  to  the  other,  of  the  two  first 
qualifications  which  he  lays  down  as  essential  to  the  char- 
acter of  the  minister  of  Christ,  and  the  formation  of  the 
pastoral  tie.  The  first,  in  an  especial  manner,  concerns 
the  minister  himself.  It  involves  as  its  basis  conversion 
to  God,  for  without  conversion  qualification  cannot  exist ; 
and  then,  further,  "the  Spirit  of  God  inwardly  moving 
the  heart  to  seek  to  enter  into  the  holy  calling  of  the 
ministry,  for  Christ's  glory  and  the  profit  of  the  Kirk."  On 
this  surely  most  important  foundation  rests  the  ordination 
formulas  of  both  the  English  and  the  Scottish  Church. 
Hence  the  solenm  avowal  of  the  candidate  for  orders  in 
the  one,  that  he  judges  himself  "to  be  inwardly  moved  by 

33* 


390  TRANSLATIONS   INTO    FACT. 

the  Holy  Ghost  to  take  the  office  upon  him."  Hence  the 
not  less  solemn  pledge  of  the  licentiate  in  the  other,  that 
"  zeal  for  the  honor  of  God,  love  to  Jesus  Christ,  and  desire 
of  saving  souls,  are  his  great  motives  and  chief  inducements 
in  entering  into  the  functions  of  the  holy  ministry,  and  not 
worldly  designs  and  interests."  But  this  is  not  enough. 
For  the  truth  of  this  solemn  oath  there  is  but  one  man 
responsible,  —  he  who  takes  it;  whereas,  the  consequences 
and  character  of  his  ministry  must  inevitably  affect  more 
than  himself; — the  people  have  also  their  responsibility. 
If  Ae  must  render  an  account  of  what  and  in  what  spirit  he 
preaches,  they  also  must  render  an  account  of  what  and  in 
what  spirit  they  hear.  "  Christ  is  the  Head  of  every  man." 
And  so  the  people's  turn  comes  next.  It  is  the  people  who 
must  nominate.  By  the  light  which  God  has  vouchsafed, 
—  by  their  sympathies,  their  experience,  and  their  knowl- 
edge, as  Christians,  —  by  those  deeply  based,  undefinable 
feelings  through  which  the  voice  of  the  true  Shepherd  is 
distinguished  from  that  of  the  stranger  and  the  hireling, — ■ 
through,  in  short,  that  entire  capacity  in  Christ's  people 
to  which  the  command,  "Beware  of  false  teachers,"  is 
addressed  by  Christ  himself,  —  must  their  views  be  regu- 
lated, their  choice  directed.  It  is  they,  the  people,  not 
l^resbyteries  or  synods,  who  are  mainly  interested  in  the 
matter.  Life  and  death  must  tell  of  it.  Throughout  time 
the  complexion  of  their  spiritual  being  may  depend  upon 
it.  Its  effects,  as  it  regards  them,  are  to  stretch  onwards 
through  eternity,  and  reach  the  dread  bar  of  final  judg- 
ment. And  who,  in  a  question  so  vital,  shall  dare  inter- 
fere, and  take  the  decision  out  of  their  hands,  though  all 
unable,  in  the  impotence  of  presumption,  to  divest  them 
of  the  attaching  responsibility?  Who  are  the  prophets 
prepared  to  stand  in  this  gap  ?  Muirs,  Cooks,  and  Robert- 
sons ?  One  tells  us  there  can  be  no  such  thing  as  intrusion 
in  the  circumstances,  seeing  that  all  clergymen  are  alike 
qualified  :  "  There  is  no  man  to  whom  a  patron  can  go  who 
has  not  affixed  to  him  the  stamp  of  the  Church's  approba- 


THE   TWO   CONFLICTS.  391 

tion."  Another  assures  us  that  his  conscience  interferes, 
and  that  he  must  be  permitted,  therefore,  to  decide  for  the 
Marnochs  and  Culsalmonds  of  the  country,  that  Edwardses 
may  be  thrust  into  the  one,  and  Middletons  into  the  other. 
A  third  takes  a  still  bolder  flight.  The  wise,  the  good,  the 
venerable  of  the  country,  assert  the  principle  of  Knox ; 
and  he  coolly  tells  them  that  they  are  just  "taking  a  forward 
step  in  the  great  march,  the  end  of  which  would  be,  in 
Scotland,  the  dissemination  of  infidelity  and  misrule." 

It  is  unnecessary  to  show  how  miserably  these  men  fail 
in  their  duty,  by  thus  absorbing  that  of  the  people  into 
their  OAvn,  —  confounding,  by  something  immensely  worse 
than  any  mere  confusion  of  idea,  the  examination  of  tlie 
Church  with  the  privileges  of  the  flock.  Nor  need  Ave 
again  refer  to  the  nice  and  masterly  precision  with  which 
Knox  could  line  out  the  provinces  of  each.  It  would  be 
no  easy  matter  to  exhaust  our  subject.  It  stretches  along 
the  entire  line  of  the  existing  controversy.  Every  princi- 
ple has  its  corresponding  fact ;  every  argument  its  answer- 
ing illustration. 


THE    TWO    CONFLICTS. 

We  have  had  occasion  oftener  than  once  to  remark  the 
great  celerity  of  movement,  if  we  may  so  sj^eak,  which 
characterizes  the  events  of  the  present  age.  It  would 
seem  as  if  the  locomotive  and  the  railroad  had  been  intro- 
duced into  every  department  of  human  affjiirs,  —  as  if  the 
amount  of  change  which  sufliced  in  the  past  scheme  of 
Providence  for  whole  centuries  had  come  to  be  compressed, 
under  a  different  economy,  within  the  limits  of  less  than 
half  a  lifetime.  Events  thicken  in  these  latter  scenes  of 
the  great  drama.  There  is  a  condensation  of  the  matter 
as  the  volume  draws  to  its  close  —  the  adoption  of  a  closer 
and  denser  type.  One  seems  almost  justified  in  holding 
that  the  great  machine  of  society  is  on  the   eve  of  being 


392  THE   TWO   CONFLICTS. 

precipitated  on  some  all-important  crisis,  and  tliat  the 
rapidity  with  which  the  wheels  revolve  marks  the  sudden 
abruptness  of  the  descent. 

Now,  there  is  at  least  one  advantage  which  should  be 
derived  from  living  in  such  a  time.  It  furnishes  opportu- 
nities which  have  a  tendency,  if  well  employed,  of  length- 
ening the  term  of  one's  rational  existence.  It  provides 
reflection  with  the  materials  of  extended  observation,  and 
enables  us  to  weigh  one  class  of  events  against  another, 
not,  as  our  fathers  did,  in  two  imequal  scales,  —  the  one 
furnished  by  personal  experience,  the  other  by  the  uncer- 
tainties of  historical  narrative,  —  but  in  the  more  equally 
adjusted  balances  of  personal  experience  alone.  A  Scotch- 
man of  the  times  of  Charles  I.  knew  of  only  religious 
struggles.  It  vvas  the  one  question  of  the  age,  wliether  all 
religious  light  was  to  pass  to  the  people  through  the  me- 
dium of  Laud  and  his  coadjutors,  broken  into  a  colored 
maze  of  deceptive  splendor,  in  which  every  object  j^ut  on 
a  false  and  distorted  appearance ;  or  whether  they  should 
not  look  direct  on  that  Sun  of  Revelation  which,  more 
emphatically  than  in  the  meaning  of  Solomon,  "  it  is  a 
good  thing  to  behold,"  and  whose  bright  yet  sober  efful- 
gence is  the  untinted  medium  of  truth.  A  century  passed, 
and  a  sleepy  expression  of  mediocre  power  and  half-intel- 
ligence rested  on  the  face  of  British  society.  The  great 
religious  struggle  had  been  over  for  more  than  an  age  ;  and 
the  denizens  of  the  time,  in  summing  up  the  portion  of  his- 
tory which  fell  within  the  range  of  their  own  experience, 
could  have  told  of  little  else  than  of  the  petty  intrigues  of 
corrupt  and  selfish  statesmen,  or  of  the  conflicting  claims  of 
rival  princes,  —  men  by  whom  kingdoms,  with  tlieir  people, 
were  regarded  as  but  mere  family  properties,  and  wars  as 
but  a  sort  of  lawsuits  that  determine  their  disposah  There 
passed  half  a  century  more,  and  all  was  changed.  The 
masses  were  in  motion  ;  the  great  interests  of  classes  and 
communities  were  agitated;  and  politics  had  become  a 
desperate  game,  at  which  the  people  played  deeply  against 


THE   TWO   CONFLICTS.  393 

their  rulers,  with  happiness  and  freedom  as  the  supposed 
stake,  and  at  the  close  of  which,  falling  into  a  true  gam- 
bler's quarrel,  they  filled  the  earth  with  anarchy,  violence, 
and  blood.  The  series  of  these  three  great  states  of  things, 
if  we  may  so  express  ourselves,  occupied  two  whole  cen- 
turies. Individual  experience  stretched  but  a  little  way 
along  the  line.  It  could  know,  in  its  own  proper  character, 
of  only  "one  of  the  three  conditions.  Its  borrowed  recol- 
lections of  a  former  state  of  things  failed  adequately  to 
mingle  with  its  observations  of  a  present  state.  They  were 
not ^6r5on6«^  recollections;  there  was  substance  on  the  one 
hand,  mere  shadow  on  the  other.  Men  looked  on  a  gray 
and  silent  past,  through  the  darkened  and  colored  glass  of 
history,  as  merely  curious  inquirers ;  while  on  the  living, 
bustling,  tangible  realities  before  them  they  gazed  through 
the  clear  atmosphere  of  sentient  existence,  as  earnest, 
excited,  interested  spectators. 

Through  that  quickening  of  the  wheels  of  Providence 
to  which  we  advert,  the  case  is  essentially  different  now. 
Individual  experience  embraces  the  three  distinct  states ; 
and  men  in  the  pride  of  middle  manhood,  who  have  not 
misused  their  experience,  know  at  least  a  little  of  each. 
The  intrigues  of  mere  individuals  form  no  inconsiderable 
portion  of  our  country's  history  during  the  reign  of  George 
TV. ;  so  much  so,  that  from  the  trial  of  Caroline  to  the 
death  of  Canning  there  seems  little  that  may  not  be 
referred  to  the  petty  manoeuvring  of  diplomatists,  or  to  the 
piques  or  partialities  of  the  sovereign.  With  the  times  of 
William,  however,  a  sterner  element  is  introduced ;  the 
masses  become  the  all-potent  moving-power  of  the  state 
engine,  and  for  a  time  legislation  serves  but  to  index  their 
wishes.  A  noiseless  revolution  then  succeeds.  There  is 
a  sudden  shifting  of  scenes,  a  changing  of  actors,  a  thorough 
revival  of  principles,  nnseen,  on  at  least  the  surface  of 
affairs,  since  the  times  of  the  Charleses.  The  antagonist 
parties  that  at  the  Reformation  shook  all  Europe  with  the 
violence  of  their  conflict,  rise  in  their  most  characteristic 


894  THE   TWO    CONFLICTS. 

form,  in  the  two  great  establishments  of  the  empire  ;  and, 
though  the  contest  at  its  present  stage  may  be  regarded  as 
but  an  affair  of  outposts,  the  war  has  ah-eady  begun. 
Twenty  years  nave  thus  repeated  to  us  the  lessons  of  two 
centuries. 

We  are  afraid  it  will  scarce  be  disputed  that  the  great 
political  movement  of  the  country  has  terminated  in  dis- 
appointment among  at  least  the  masses.  Chartism,  how- 
ever doubtful  its  evidence  on  other  matters,  testifies  all 
too  truly,  by  the  very  extent  of  its  own  existence,  that  the 
physical  condition  of  the  people  has  not  been  bettered. 
The  election  committees  of  the  House  of  Commons 
demonstrate  all  too  unequivocally  that  their  moral  charac- 
ter has  not  been  iniproved.  Nay,  to  state  the  case  in  neg- 
atives is  to  do  it  injustice.  Indirectly,  at  least,  the  tone 
of  our  national  morality  has  been  greatly  lowered.  Whigs, 
Tories,  Radicals,  Chartists,  are  all  alike  in  error,  if  ever 
before  there  sat  a  British  Parliament  based  on  so  large  an 
amount  of  bribery  and  corruption  as  the  Parliament  so 
lately  called  together  under  the  provisions  of  the  Reform 
Bill,  and  tc  secure  the  return  of  which  nearly  a  million  of 
the  people  registered  their  votes.  Are  our  religious  strug- 
gles to  terminate  in  disappointment  equally  marked  and 
lamentable  ?  —  to  leave  behind  them,  even  though  success- 
fully maintained,  no  nobler  trophies  among  our  people  than 
the  pangs  of  an  ever-accumulating  physical  distress,  or 
the  atrocities  of  an  ever-sinkino;  moral  degradation?  We 
have  formed  far  other  hopes;  nor  are  there  indications 
wanting  which  serve  to  show  that  in  these  hopes  it  is  not 
irrational  to  indulge.  The  signal  success  which  in  the  past 
year  has  attended  the  several  schemes  of  the  Church, 
during  a  season  of  great  depression  and  distress,  is  of  itself 
a  sign  of  encouragement.  In  tones  more  significant  than 
those  of  speech,  it  reminds  the  class  who,  on  the  plea  of 
"lacking  leisure  to  do  good,"  are  solicitous  to  cease  from 
the  present  conflict,  that  He  who  decreed  of  old  that  the 


THE   TWO    CO^^fFLICTS.  395 

walls  of  Zion   should   be  "bnilt  in   troublous  times,"  can 
build  them  in  troublous  times  still. 

It  fiii-nishes  no  incurious  or  uninstructive  employment  to 
run  over  the  various  features  of  the  two  great  popular 
movements  which  have  agitated  Scotland  during  the  last 
twelve  years,  —  the  political  and  the  ecclesiastical.  They 
present  themselves  to  us  as  a  series  of  scenes ;  but  we 
sliall  lack  time  even  for  bare  enumeration.  In  the  "Vision 
of  Don  Roderick,"  the  dead  stillness  is  broken  by  the  blast 
of  a  trumpet,  and  straightway  the  giant  Destiny  arises, 
and,  striking  down  with  his  iron  mace  the  curtain  of  rock 
which  interposes  between  him  and  the  future,  all  in  an 
instant  becomes  violence,  commotion,  and  war.  We  have 
a  similar  recollection  of  the  first  beginnings  of  the  great 
political  movement.  We  stood,  in  a  calm,  still  evening, 
early  in  the  August  of  1830,  —  only  twelve  years  ago  !  — 
beside  a  half-deserted  seaport  in  the  north  of  Scotland. 
A  fleet  of  fishing-boats,  bound  for  the  herring-bank,  mottled 
the  ofiing ;  a  large  French  lugger  lay  moored  beside  the 
quay,  with  her  huge  brown  sails  drooping  heavily  from  her 
masts  in  the  calm.  Groups  of  town's-people,  mostly  me- 
chanics, sauntered  along  the  shore,  or  rested  in  front  of 
the  lugger,  looking  curiously  on  the  foreigners.  The 
entire  scene  seemed  representative  of  quiet  industry  enjoy- 
ing a  leisure  hour  amid  the  repose  of  nature.  But  "hark 
the  twanging  horn  ! "  It  was  the  post  coming  in.  A  few 
minutes  elapsed,  and  then  a  newspaper,  damp  from  the 
folds,  was  handed  to  one  of  the  mechanics.  How  strangely 
exciting,  how  tremendously  important,  the  tidings  which 
it  conveyed!  "Revolution  in  France!"  —  three  days' 
war  in  the  streets  of  Paris! — the  government  over- 
powered!—  the  king  dethroned!  —  the  people  signally 
victorious  !  Huzza  !  It  was  interesting  to  mark  the  sud- 
den effect,  —  the  instant  hive-like  buzz  that  arose  amoug 
the  congregating  groups;  the  excitement  among  the 
French  crew,  none  of  whom  could  read  English,  but  to 
whom,   notwithstanding,   the    important    newspaper   was 


396  THE   TWO   CONFLICTS. 

handed ;  the  unnatural  effect  of  their  strange  French 
pronunciation  of  the  English  words,  as  they  hurried  over 
them,  made  all  the  more  strange  and  unnatural  by  the 
intense  emphasis  with  which  the  words  were  accompanied, 
and  which  spoke  so  unequivocally  of  the  over2:)owering 
anxiety  to  know  what  they  conveyed. 

It  was  the  first  blast  of  the  trumpet  that  had  blown,  and 
the  whole  British  people  awoke.  There  ensued  a  period 
of  unquiet  agitation  and  sanguine  hope,  —  agitation  in 
which  all  among  the  laboring  classes  shared,  and  hope  in 
which  they  all  indulged.  Scarce  any  one  deemed  himself 
so  obscure  but  that  some  of  the  anticipated  good  might 
reach  him.  There  was  at  least  some  indirect  advantage 
to  be  derived  to  him ;  his  labors  were  to  be  less,  or  his 
remuneration  greater,  or  he  was  at  least  to  walk  more  on 
a  level  with  the  aristocrats  of  the  country.  The  future 
historian  of  this  stirring  jDcriod  would  require  no  slight 
skill  adequately  to  represent  the  general  expression  of 
society,  if  we  may  so  speak,  during  its  high  fever  of  excite- 
ment and  expectation.  Some  of  the  earlier  effects  might 
be  easily  anticipated.  There  is  scarce  a  village  in  Britain 
that  cannot  point  out  its  wrecks  of  the  Reform  Bill,  in  the 
forms  of  broken-down  and  dissipated  mechanics  and  bank- 
rupt shopkeepers.  Not  that  the  Reform  Bill  was  bad;  we 
see  it  interposed  by  the  providence  of  God  at  the  present 
time  as  a  bulwark  between  the  Church  of  Scotland  and 
the  miserable  pohticians  who  would  so  foin  crush  and 
destroy  her.  But,  if  not  bad  in  itself,  it  at  least  led  to 
much  that  was  bad.  The  village  trader,  whose  predeces- 
sors in  business  had  gone  on  quietly,  adding  pound  to 
pound,  and  had  risen,  on  their  hard-earned  and  honest 
savings,  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  accompanying  modicum 
of  respect  and  influence,  found  a  different  way  to  rise,  —  a 
way  which  the  accompanying  municipal  reform,  no  doubt 
good  in  itself  also,  threw  more  widely  open  to  him  than 
even  the  extension  of  the  parliamentary  franchise.  In- 
fluence,   respect,    civic    honors,  and    authority,   were    the 


THE   TWO    CONFLICTS.  397 

rewards  of  his  predecessors  in  business,  if  they  but  pros- 
pered in  their  calling.  He,  on  the  other  hand,  found  a 
way  to  civic  authority  without  prospering  in  his  calling; 
nay,  of  which,  if  he  availed  himself,  all  hope  of  prospering 
in  his  calling  might  be  rationally  regarded  as  at  an  end. 
He  learned  to  canvass  for  votes  on  his  own  behalf,  and 
rose  to  the  dignity  of  a  bailie.  He  learned  to  canvass  for 
his  friend  the  member,  and  enjoyed  the  unspeakable  honor 
of  handing  the  great  man  through  the  streets  on  the  day 
of  the  election.  He  became  eloquent  on  platforms,  bril- 
liant at  public  dinners,  skilful  in  the  framing  of  resolutions, 
happy  in  the  drawing  up  of  patriotic  petitions ;  acquired, 
in  short,  the  whole  trick  of  public  business,  and,  in  nine 
cases  out  of  ten,  winded  up  his  own  by  getting  into  the 
Gazette.  A  general  unsettledness  possessed  the  com- 
munity, —  the  unsettledness  of  salient  hope.  In  almost 
every  village  there  were  two  great  classes,  —  the  solicitors 
and  the  solicited ;  and  as  the  spirit  of  Young  Reform  was 
honest,  enthusiastic,  sincere,  the  soliciting  class  exerted 
themselves  for  the  general  good  and  their  own  individual 
glorification  ;  while  the  class  solicited  were  passively  patri- 
otic just  for  the  general  good  alone.  But  the  spirit  of 
Young  Reform  became  less  honest  as  it  grew  older. 
Experience  came  to  teach  unwilling  pupils  that  there  lies 
but  little  within  the  reach  of  mere  statesmanship.  The 
over-toiled  poor  had  to  work  as  long  and  to  fare  as  hardly 
as  before.  Periods  of  depression  came  on,  as  if  there  had 
been  no  extension  of  the  franchise.  The  funded  debt 
increased,  as  if  the  Reform  Bill  had  never  passed  the 
Lords.  Men  became  weary,  too,  of  seeing  a  vulgar  upstart 
aristocracy  of  cunning  canvassers  and  adroit  beggars  of 
votes  taking  the  places  of  the  soldier  and  not  worse 
burghal  aristocracy,  who  had  carried  things  all  their  own 
way  under  the  ancient  regime^  and  of  finding  that  the  new 
men,  like  the  old,  were  getting  places  in  the  colonies  for 
their  sons,  and  places  in  the  excise  for  their  nephews,  and 
the  people  meanwhile  none  the  better.     Chartism  broke 

34 


898  THE    TWO    CONFLICTS. 

oiF,  indignant,  and  set  up  for  itself.  A  quieter  and  tamer 
class  crept  silently  into  the  opposite  scale,  and  solaced 
themselves,  when  registering  their  tory  suftVages,  by  call- 
ing them  conservative.  Worst  of  all,  franchise-holders 
began  to  consider  by  thousands  whether,  as  they  could  do 
almost  nothing  for  the  country  by  giving  their  votes,  they 
might  not  do  just  a  little  for  themselves  by  selling  them  ; 
and  hence  the  election  markets  of  the  country,  with  thcnr 
ticketed  oaths  and  priced  perjuries.  The  generous  romance, 
the  high-toned  enthusiasm,  of  Young  Reform^  evaporated 
as  he  rose  in  years,  uutil  at  length,  changing  his  character 
altogether,  he  sunk  iiilo  a  worn-out  and  selfish  truckler, 
devoid  both  of  virtue  and  the  belief  in  it ;  and  thus  what 
had  been  Young  Heform  became  Old  Corruption. 

Nor  has  the  great  political  fever  been  more  favorable  to 
the  intellectual  than  to  the  moral  character  of  our  country. 
A  few  contemplative  natures  there  are  that  need  no  other 
spur  to  quicken  them  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge  than  just 
the  love  of  it.  But  it  is  far  otherwise  with  the  great  bulk 
of  the  species.  In  the  average  intellect  attention  never 
concentrates  save  under  the  influence  of  some  serious 
belief  And  hence  the  superficiality  of  a  merely  political 
people.  They  catch  up  shadows  of  opinions,  impalpable 
and  unreal  as  those  thin  films  which,  according  to  the  old 
metaphysicians,  bodies  in  the  light  are  continually  casting 
ofiT,  and  which  were  regarded  as  the  direct  causes  of  vision. 
They  are  less  the  recipients  of  knowledge  than  the  objects 
on  which  a  kind  of  knowledge  is  reflected,  —  mere  blank 
tablets,  athwart  which  a  periodical  press  throws,  like  a  huge 
magic-lantern,  its  fantastic  and  ever-shifting  images.  The 
period  of  political  excitement  created  no  thinkers.  There 
was  not  enough  of  earnestness  left  among  the  people,  after 
the  first  delirium  had  passed,  to  give  motion  or  direction 
to  their  thoughts.  It  was  Christianity  through  which 
the  popular  mind  in  Scotland  was  originally  developed; 
through  Christianity  alone  can  it  be  awakened  anew.  The 
distracting   turmoil   of  secular  politics,   with  the   accom- 


THE  TWO    CONFLICTS.  399 

panying  excitement,  has  ever  served  but  to  dissipate  and 
weaken  it. 

From  the  ecclesiastical  struggle  we  anticipate  effects  of 
a  very  different  character  from  those  produced  by  the 
political  one ;  and  certainly  the  first  fruits  are  not  of  a 
kind  suited  to  disappoint  expectation.  Both  struggles 
might  be  represented,  we  have  said,  in  a  series  of  scenes ; 
nor  would  the  scenes  characteristic  of  the  ecclesiastical 
struggle  form  the  less  striking  series  of  the  two, —  whether 
we  choose  to  draw  from  the  atrocities  that  impart  to  the 
resistance  of  the  Church  its  character  of  stern  necessity, 
or  from  the  strange  instances  of  discordant  coalition 
exhibited  in  the  motley  array  of  her  assailants,  or  from 
the  courts  in  which  bewigged  and  berobed  law  deals  upon 
her  its  censures,  in  all  the  conscious  bravery  of  horse-hair, 
white  ribbon,  and  taffeta,  and  devoid  only  of  moral  weight ; 
or,  more  pleasing  surely,  from  the  spectacle  of  earnest 
multitudes  gathered  together  in  her  behalf,  and  prepared 
to  assert  her  cause  in  its  true  character,  as  Scotland's  old 
hereditary  quarrel ;  or  from  the  evening  meeting  in  some 
rural  hamlet,  to  which,  from  distant  glens  and  solitary  hill- 
sides, a  devout  and  thoughtful  people  have  gathered,  to 
wear  out  the  night  in  implorations  to  Heaven  for  her 
safety;  or  from  scenes  of  family  devotion  in  many  a  lonely 
cottage,  in  which  her  name  and  her  cause  are  not  forgotten 
when  gray-haired  patriarchs  wrestle  in  prayer  wdth  their 
God. 

Very  much  still  remains  to  be  done ;  but  we  accept  as  a 
token  of  good  in  her  behalf  the  strengthening  devotional 
feeling  of  the  country,  —  the  deeper  tone  of  spirituality 
imparted  to  the  ministrations  of  so  many  of  her  clergymen, 
—  the  great  increase  in  the  number  of  her  prayer-meetings; 
nay,  it  is  something,  too,  that  Moderatism  itself,  provoked 
to  unwonted  diligence,  should  be  attempting,  with  a  hand 
stiffened  by  disuse,  to  trace  out  the  line  of  duty.  Instances 
are  not  wanting  in  which,  aw^aking  from  its  sleep  of  a  cen- 
tury, it  has  half  striven,  in  its  bewilderment,  to  escape  from 


400  THE   TWO    CONFLICTS. 

its  dreams  of  effete  commonplace  into  tlie  living  realities 
of  the  gospel ;  and  we  have  high  authority  for  saying  that 
it  is  well  Christ  should  be  preached,  even  though  preached 
out  of  contention.  There  is  much  implied  in  that  marked 
increase  which  has  taken  place,  during  the  course  of  the 
last  twelvemonth,  in  the  funds  of  the  various  schemes  of 
the  Church,  and  to  which  we  have  already  referred.  It 
conclusively  proves  that  the  controversy  in  which  she  is 
entangled  has  had  no  narrowing  or  secularizing  effect  on 
the  minds  of  the  classes  most  engaged  in  it;  that  its 
tendencies  are  of  a  directly  opposite  character;  and  that, 
amid  harassments  and  perj)lexities  at  home,  there  has  been 
more  thought  of  our  countrymen  abroad  destitute  of  the 
means  of  religious  instruction,  —  of  the  poor  benighted 
Hindu,  of  the  long-lost  house  of  Israel,  of  the  young 
among  ourselves  growing  up  in  ignorance,  and  of  the  old 
and  middle-aged  passing  on  in  darkness  to  their  graves,  — 
than  at  periods  when  the  j^eace  among  us  was  unbroken, 
and  all  our  narratives  of  persecution  belonged  exclusively 
to  the  past.  JSTor  are  there  proofs  wanting  that  the  effects 
of  the  struggle  are  good  intellectually.  Our  litterateurs 
need  be  in  no  fear  of  seeing  the  country  thrown  back  into 
a  state  of  barbarism.  It  was  in  times  such  as  the  present 
that  the  humble  peasantry  of  Scotland  learned  to  foil  at 
their  own  weapons  the  most  skilful  controversialists  of  the 
persecuting  Church,  and  left  their  death-testimonies  to 
posterity,  to  bear  witness  alike  to  the  indomitable  firmness 
and  integrity  Avith  which  they  maintained  their  principles, 
and  to  the  high  degree  of  intelligence  which  they  had 
learned  to  exert  in  the  defence  of  them.  "  The  severities  to 
which  he  had  been  subjected,"  says  Sir  James  Mackintosh, 
"  had  led  Bunyan  to  revolve  in  his  own  mind  the  principles 
of  religious  freedom,  until  he  had  acquired  the  ability  of 
baffling,  in  the  conflict  of  argument,  the  most  acute  and 
learned  among  his  persecutors."  There  is  an  important 
principle  involved  in  the  remark.  It  exhibits  the  necessity 
which  stimulates  to  thought  and  invention,  arising  direct 


THE   TWO    CONFLICTS.  401 

out  of  religious  belief  acted  on  by  persecution,  —  a  princi- 
ple the  efficacy  of  which  may  be  soon  tested  in  Scotland, 
as  of  old.  Meanwhile  there  is  a  degree  of  interest  excited, 
which  has  already  operated  favorably  on  the  popular  mind. 
Men  are  falling  back  upon  the  past,  with  all  its  earnest 
feeling  and  deep  thinking,  who  were  content  hitherto  to 
skim  over  tlie  cold  superficialities  of  the  present.  The 
Reformation  is  recognized  once  more  as  super-eminently 
the  great  event  of  modern  history ;  and  there  is  more  read 
and  known  regarding  it  than  at  any  other  period  for  the 
last  hundred  years.  It  is  a  fact  of  some  importance  that 
our  ecclesiastical  histories  have  become  the  most  popular 
and  salable  books  of  the  time. 

"I  have  ever  been  an  enemy  to  religious  strife,"  said 
Lord  Dunfermline,  in  allusion  to  the  existing  controversy, 
when  throwing  his  entire  weight  into  the  opposite  scale, 
—  "I  have  ever  been  an  enemy  to  religious  strife."  His 
lordship  had  gained  a  great  deal  by  the  political  "  strife," 
then  well-nigh  at  its  close,  —  influence,  title,  broad  lands, 
and  solid  guineas;  whereas  by  the  "religious  strife"  he 
could  expect  to  gain  notliing.  Besides,  its  cross  move- 
ments had  thrown  him  out  in  his  calculations,  and  con- 
verted the  last  political  act  of  his  life  into  a  somewhat 
ludicrous  blunder.  And  so,  as  the  singularly  charitable 
advocate  of  the  grossnesses  of  intrusion,  and  the  singularly 
liberal  detester  of  the  just  rights  of  Christian  men,  he 
looked  very  magnanimous,  and  denounced  "religious  strife." 
We  have  attempted  placing  the  two  strifes  before  our 
readers  in  some  of  their  more  palpable  effects.  Both  were 
alike  ordered  by  the  Disposer  of  all  things,  and  their  time 
and  their  bounds  set,  with  no  reference,  surely,  to  the 
antipathies  or  predilections  of  churchmen  or  politicians. 
Peace  and  war  come  alike  from  God.  But  it  seems  no 
difficult  matter  to  say  which  of  the  two  seems  the  nobler 
and  more  hopeful  battle,  or  in  which  it  is  most  a  privilege 
to  be  called  to  contend. 

34* 


402  TENDENCIES. 


TENDENCIES. 

PART    FIRST. 

One  finds  but  little  difficulty  in  estimating  the  tenden- 
cies of  a  bygone  time  in  the  -page  of  history.  The  events 
stand  out  in  a  clear  light,  portable  in  bulk,  and  arranged 
in  due  order.  We  see  in  what  they  have  begun  and  in 
what  they  have  terminated ;  and  arrive,  with  scarce  an 
effort,  at  our  conclusions  regarding  their  general  scope  and 
bearing.  But  it  is  far  otherwise  with  the  tendencies  of  a 
present  age.  It  is  no  such  easy  matter  to  estimate  their 
strength  and  direction.  We  are  too  deeply  interested  in 
the  passing  events  to  appreciate  them  justly,  or  we  are 
interested  in  them  too  slightly,  and  our  indifferency  has 
equally  the  effect  of  setting  our  judgments  at  fault.  They 
bulk  large  or  small  in  our  minds,  less  in  agreement  with 
their  own  true  proportions  than  in  accordance  with  the 
medium  of  predilection  or  prejudice  through  w^hich  we 
survey  them.  We  are  too  much  among  them,  and  too 
near  them,  to  see  them  as  they  really  are,  or  to  mark  the 
direction  in  which  they  are  bearing  us  in  their  course.  The 
current  of  tendency  in  the  past,  as  exhibited  in  history,  is 
a  clear,  transparent  stream,  that  sparkles  in  the  sunshine. 
As  involved  in  the  occurrences  of  the  present,  it  is  a  turbid 
and  sullen  tide,  with  a  sombrous  curtain  of  cloud  resting 
over  it  and  on  either  hand,  and  with  thick  darkness  before. 
The  voyager  finds  it  a  comparatively  easy  matter  to  trace 
his  course  on  the  chart.  The  observations  are  already 
taken  to  his  hand  on  the  graduated  margin,  and  carried 
carefully  across  by  the  reticulated  lines  ;  and  the  ocean  he 
is  crossing  must  be  a  wide  ocean  indeed  if  he  does  not  see 
the  land  which  he  has  left  a  very  few  inches  astern  of  him, 
and  the  land  to  which  he  is  going  a  very  few  inches  ahead. 
But  it  is  a  quite  different  matter  to  trace  his  course  over 


TENDENCIES.  403 

the  broad  and  living  sea,  with  its  tossing  waves  and  its 
perplexing  currents,  when  the  distant  horizon  sinks  all 
around  him  over  a  trackless  waste  of  waters,  and  he  knows 
that  far  beyond  the  line  of  that  wide  circle,  where  sky  and 
sea  seem  to  meet,  the  waste  spreads  on,  and  on,  and  on,  for 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  miles.  And  when  all  is  dark 
with  sleet  and  rime,  and  his  bark  is  staggering  onward 
before  the  tempest ;  when  wild  uproar  and  giddy  tumult 
reio-n  below,  and  o-loom  and  thick  cloud  darken  the  heavens 
above ;  when  no  star  looks  out  from  amid  the  rack  by 
night,  and  no  sun  shines  through  the  thick  fog  by  day ; 
when,  amid  the  restless  welter  of  the  deck,  he  has  lashed 
his  pilot  to  the  helm,  and  stationed  his  forlorn  watch  in  the 
top^ — he  must  be  content  to  confess  a  lack  of  knowledge 
as  certainly  as  a  lack  of  power,  and  that  he  is  in  no  degree 
less  able  to  control  the  irresistible  waves  and  winds  that 
are  driving  him  involuntarily  on,  than  to  say  where  they 
have  brought  him,  or  to  what  untried  scenes  of  terror  or 
peril  they  are  hurrying  him  away. 

But  however  difficult  it  may  be  to  estimate  the  true 
tendencies  of  a  present  age,  it  is  all-important  that  they 
should  be  estimated ;  just  as  it  is  all-important  to  the 
voyager  in  the  storm  that  he  should  know  where  he  is,  and 
to  what  coast  he  is  driving.  And  it  is  peculiarly  important 
in  an  age  like  the  present,  when  the  powers  of  good  and 
evil  seem  as  if  mustering  their  forces  for  some  signal 
struggle. 

We  are  told  by  chivalrous  old  Barbour,  in  his  "  Acts 
and  Achievements  of  the  Bruce,"  that  when 

"  Sir  Aymer  and  Johne  of  Lome, 
Chasit  the  kiuge  with  hounde  and  home," 

the  pursuing  body  despatched  five  of  their  lightest  and 
most  active  men  to  overtake  the  hard-pressed  warrior,  then 
in  full  view,  and  to  detain  and  hold  him  at  bay  until  the 
coming   up   of  the    rest.      And    overtake  and  bring   him 


404  TENDENCIES. 

to  bay  they  did.  But  ere  the  main  force  of  Lome  and  Sir 
Aymer  could  reach  the  green  holm  in  which  he  had  turned 
on  his  pursuers,  the  sward  was  cumbered  by  five  bleeding 
and  mutilated  corpses,  and  the  formidable  fugitive  had 
again  shot  far  ahead.  The  Church  of  Scotland  has  not 
fared  so  well.  The  Voluntary  controversy  overtook  her 
in  her  course  during  the  dorainancy  of  a  whig  ministry, 
and  had  unquestionably  strength  enough  to  keep  her  at 
bay  during  a  time  which  she  could  have  employed,  had  she 
not  been  so  entangled,  as  peculiarly  opportune  and  favor- 
able for  securing  her  safety.  Placed  in  an  eminently  pop- 
ular position,  and  warmly  supported  by  her  lay  members, 
Avho  felt  that  her  quarrel  was  in  reality  theirs,  she  had  to 
deal  with  a  government  whose  only  mode  of  estimating 
the  importance  of  religion  was  by  determining  the  votes 
that  it  could  command,  and  to  whom,  with  more  than  the 
emphasis  of  the  old  proverb,  "the  voice  of  the  people  was 
the  voice  of  God."  The  religious  element,  in  its  character 
as  such,  never  entered  into  their  calculations.  If  the  popu- 
lar power  of  Scotch  Voluntaryism  mustered  as  twenty, 
and  the  popular  power  of  the  Scotch  Establishment  as 
twenty-one,  they  would  just  have  subtracted  the  lesser 
from  tl]e  larger  sum,  and  have  given  the  Church  the  benefit 
of  the  balance.  Every  vote  against  her  was  regarded  as  a 
positive  deduction  from  the  justice  of  her  claims.  And  it 
was  under  a  government  of  this  character  that  the  Volun- 
tary controversy  broke  out,  to  divide  the  popular  forces  of 
the  country,  and  to  place  our  rulers  for  the  time  in  the  cir- 
cumstances of  the  ass  between  the  two  bundles  of  hay. 
Let  political  Voluntaries  assert  what  they  may,  the  con- 
troversy is  now  dead  —  dead  as  any  of  the  five  hapless  pur- 
suers of  the  Bruce,  who,  like  evangelic  Dissent  in  this 
instance,  w^ere  so  active  to  their  own  hurt.  But  it  is  all  too 
apparent  that,  ere  it  sunk  into  utter  weakness  and  died,  it 
accomplished  its  work.  It  entangled  and  detained  the 
Church  at  a  time  when  otherwise  she  would  have  been 
employed  in  making  secure  her  safety  through  the  popular 


TENDENCIES.  405 

influences ;    and,  when  thus  entangled  and  kept  at  bay, 
other  enemies  came  up. 

The  same  change  of  ministry^  which  had  the  effect  of 
placing  an  already  sinking  Voluntaryism  hors  de  combat 
had  the  effect  of  placing  a  much  elated  and  sanguine  Mod- 
eratism  in  what  Moderatism  itself  deemed  a  position  of 
great  strength.  It  saw  full  before  it  a  scene  of  triumph, 
—  the  return  of  the  days  of  its  old  majorities,  and  of  its 
high-handed  and  much-loved  policy ;  and  all  that  seemed 
necessary  to  secure  almost  instant  victory  was  just  one 
bold  stroke.  Hence  the  unceasing  exertions  of  Moderate 
influence  with  the  conservative  government  to  baffle  all 
attempts  at  even  an  indifferently  fair  adjustment  of  the 
controversy.  The  Church,  in  her  course  towards  safety,  — 
a  course  that  had  now  become  much  more  dubious  and 
uncertain  than  before,  and  which  promised,  humanly  speak- 
ing, much  fewer  chances  of  escape,  —  had  to  contend  with 
an  enemy  formidable  mainly  from  the  entanglement  and 
delay  that  it  occasioned.  Moderatism  had  most  certainly 
no  intention  of  bringing  down  the  Establishment.  It  is 
well  aware  how  very  miserably  it  would  fire  without  it. 
We  give  our  present  Lord  Justice-Clerk  [Hope]  full  credit 
for  attachment  to  the  Scottish  Establishment,  and  believe 
that,  had  he  to  choose  between  two  great  evils,  he  would 
rather  see  it  Evangelistic  than  Puseyite.  At  this  most 
important  result,  however,  has  the  Cliurch  now  arrived, 
and  the  question  has  assumed  a  new  aspect  in  consequence. 
It  is  a  point  virtually  decided  by  the  resokitions  of  the  late 
Convocation,  that  the  existing  controversy  shall  be  either 
settled  on  fair,  non-intrusion  principles,  or  that  the  Estab- 
lishment of  Scotland  shall  not  be  a  Presbyterian  Establish- 
ment. The  second  enemy  that  has  entangled  and  kept  the 
Church  at  bay  jDromises  soon  to  sink  into  a  state  of  as 
great  powerlessness  as  her  first  enemy.  But  it,  too,  may 
have  accomplished  its  work.  The  great  apostasy  has  been 
meanwhile  rising  into  strength  in  England,  and  asserting 

1  The  accession  of  the  Conservatives  to  power  in  1841. 


406  TENDENCIES. 

its  place  as  the  master  principle  of  that  "kingdom.  It  was 
powerless  at  the  time  when  Voluntaryism  contended  with 
our  Church.  When  Moderatism  contended  with  her,  its 
joints  were  still  unknit,  its  muscles  undeveloped,  its 
strength  rather  prospective  than  actual.  But  it  is  an  im- 
mensely stronger  principle  now.  The  Church  has  been 
detained  and  entangled  in  her  course  by  antagonists  much 
indeed  her  inferiors  in  j^rowess ;  but  ere  she  has  succeeded 
in  fully  mastering  them,  it  would  seem  as  if  the  main  body 
of  the  enemy  had  come  up.  How  strange  if,  in  the  revo- 
lutions of  those  cloud-enveloped  and  mysteriously-compli- 
cated wheels  of  Providence  which  the  prophet  in  vision 
saw,  the  efibrts  of  Voluntaries,  many  of  them  truly  Chris- 
tian men,  and  the  active  hostility  of  Moderates,  men 
at  least  hostile  to  superstition  and  to  the  dogmas  of  the 
"  malignant  Church,"  should  turn  out  to  be  but  mere 
diversions,  made  all  blindly  and  unwittingly  in  favor  of 
the  great  apostasy ! 

There  can  be  at  least  little  rational  doubt  that  Puseyism 
will  now  exert  an  influence  on  the  adjustment  of  our 
Scottish  Church  question  which  at  an  earlier  period  it 
could  not  have  exerted.  When  Voluntaryism  began  its 
opposition,  Puseyism  had  no  existence;  when  Moderatism 
began  its  opposition,  Puseyism  was  comparatively  weak. 
Nay,  independently  of  both,  the  Church,  in  her  j^resent 
position,  had  she  been  but  prepared  to  take  it  up,  might 
have  very  possibly  compelled  a  fair  and  liberal  settlement 
fiom  Conservatism  when  Sir  Robert  Peel  entered  upon 
office,  or  from  Libei'alism  ere  Lord  Melbourne  quitted  it. 
iSTeither  of  these  statesmen,  left  to  themselves,  could  have 
contemplated  for  a  moment  the  disestablishment  of  the 
national  religion  of  Scotland,  with  all  the  long  train  of 
evils  which  such  an  event  must  of  necessity  draw  along 
with  it,  as  a  thing  to  be  permitted  in  any  circumstances. 
But  a  new  party  has  become  strong  in  the  political  field, 
that,  throuojh  the  disturbiuGf  influence  of  an  element  of 
religious    belief,  will   be    wholly  incapable   of  estimating 


TENDENCIES.  407 

these  evils  aright.     We  say  an  element  of  religious  belief. 
It   is    common   to   all   sincere    religionists,   whether  their 
creed  be  a  true  or  a  false  one,  to  "  hope  against  hope,"  — 
to  hope  at  least  against  probability,  —  to  shut  their  eyes 
to  what  seem  the  teachings  of  experience  in  cases  in  which 
these    teachings   run    counter   to    some    promise   of   their 
religion,   and   to   open   them   to   the   promise   only.      We 
believe,  as   Christians,   for  instance,  that  the  knowledge 
of  the  Lord  shall  one  day  cover  the  whole  earth.     Why? 
Do  we  find  grounds  for  any  such  belief  in  either  the  pres- 
ent state  of  things  or  in  the  world's  past  history?     Very 
slight  grounds  indeed.     If  we  see  true  churches  springing 
up  in  one  part  of  the  globe,  do  we  not  see  them  dying 
out  in  another?     Tahiti  and  the  Sandwich  Islands  have 
their   Christianity.      Yes;    but  what  has  become  of  the 
Seven  Churches  of  Asia?     America  has  had  her  revivals. 
Yes ;  but  how  much  of  the  living  religion  of  the  Reforma- 
tion is  now  to  be  found   on  the   Continent  of  Europe? 
We  do  not  found  our  belief  in  the  ultimate  triumph  of  our 
religion  on  the  evidence  of  history,  or  on  a  survey  of  the 
present  prospects  of  society.    We  have  a  much  better  foun- 
dation ;  w^e  ground  it  on  the  promise  of  our  God.     And, 
let  the  probabilities  run  as  they  may,  it  is  a  belief  which 
we  shall  therefore  continue  to  hold  fast.     Now  false,  like 
true  churches,  have  their  beliefs,  firmly   held  after   this 
fashion,  which  run  counter  to  the  probabilities;   nor  can 
there  be  elements  that  more  disturb  calculations,  or  that 
lead   to  the   perpetration   of  greater   follies    and    crimes. 
Puseyism  indulges  in  them  ;  nor  has  there  been  any  lack 
of  indication  regarding  the  points  on  which  they  are  con- 
centrated.    There   is   not  one   of  our  readers  more  thor- 
oughly based  in  the  belief  that  China,  or  Hindustan,  or 
the    Persian    empire,    shall    be    one    day    Christian,   than 
Puseyism   is  grounded   in  tlie  belief  that  Scotland   shall 
be  one  day  Puseyite.     It  is  formidable,  in  a  crisis  like  the 
present,  to  have  to  come  in  contact  with  such  a  principle. 
The   rational    weighers   of  probal^ilities   are   easily   dealt 


408  TENDENCIES. 

with;  not  so  the  blind  hopers  against  hope.  Men  of 
expediency,  such  as  Sir  Kobert  Peel,  —  men  less  in  danger 
of  believing  anything  they  don't  see  than  of  doubting 
when  they  ought  to  believe,  —  will  find  no  difiiculty,  as 
we  have  said,  in  at  least  estimating  the  circumstances  in 
which  our  country  is  at  present  placed.  Sir  Robert,  two 
years  ago,  would  have  acted  in  due  accordance  with  such 
an  estimate.  But  it  is  at  least  questionable  whether  the 
expediency  party  which  he  represents  is  powerful  enough 
to  act  upon  it  now.  The  hopers  against  hope  —  the  bigots 
who  "  believe  because  it  is  impossible  "  —  muster  strong 
in  the  rear  of  our  statesmen  of  mere  expediency.  Their 
influence  to  disturb,  disarrange,  disappoint,  is  great,  and 
will,  we  doubt  not,  be  vigorously  exerted.  We  have  to 
expect,  in  consequence,  we  are  afraid,  much  wilful  mis- 
representation, much  intentional  misapprehension,  much 
exaggeration  of  our  claims  as  unreasonable  and  absurd, 
much  insinuation  that  our  designs  are  selfish  and  dis- 
honest ;  delays  ingeniously  spun  out  to  wear  us  down  ; 
perhaps  a  bill  meanly  equivocal  in  phrase,  framed  inten- 
tionally to  palter  in  a  double  sense ;  perhaps  no  bill  at  all. 
If  such  be  the  state  and  apparent  tendency  of  things, 
what  course  ought  the  Church  to  pursue  ?  Is  it  at  once 
her  interest  and  her  duty  vigorously  to  persevere  in  form- 
ing her  congregational  associations,  and  in  securing  every- 
where the  adherence  of  her  people  ?  Her  better  consola- 
tions and  encouragements  are  to  be  derived  from  the 
highest  of  all  sources;  but  there  can  be  no  harm  in 
remembering,  besides,  that  if  there  be  powerful  principles 
opposed  to  her,  the  princij^tles  for  which  she  has  to  con- 
tend have  been,  ever  since  the  Reformation  at  least,  by 
much  the  strongest  in  Scotland.  "It  matters  not,"  says 
Carlyle,  in  his  quaint  but  striking  manner,  — "  it  matters 
not  though  a  thing  be  a  small  thing;  if  it  be  a  true  thing 
it  will  grow."  Cromwell  and  Napoleon  were  once  puny 
infants.  But  there  was  a  principle  of  life  in  them,  and  of 
undeveloped  power;  antl  so  they  both  grew  up  to  be  very 


TENDENCIES.  409 

great  men.  Rather  more  than  a  century  ago,  Moderatism 
cast  out  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  four  clergymen.  A 
small  matter,  it  may  be  thought.  Yes;  small  in  much 
the  same  way  that  the  infant  Cromwell  and  the  infant 
Napoleon  were  small.  The  transaction  involved  one  of 
the  principles  of  our  present  controversy.  The  thing  was 
a  small  thing  in  itself,  but  then  it  embodied  a  great  and 
true  principle,  and  so  the  small  thing  grew.  And  in  the 
present  day,  the  four  rejected  clergymen  are  represented 
by  five  hundred  clergymen  and  by  five  hundred  thousand 
people.  If  the  worst  comes  to  the  worst  with  the  Church 
of  Scotland,  she  bids  fair  to  begin  her  course,  not  as  a 
small,  but  as  a  very  great  thing,  —  to  begin  with  the  five 
hundred  ministers  and  the  five  hundred  thousand  people. 
And  to  the  life-imparting,  growth-securing  principle  of 
the  Secession,  she  adds  another  master-principle  whose 
strength  has  also  been  amply  tested  in  Scotland.  The 
contendings  of  the  Secession  in  the  last  century  involved 
mainly  the  non-intrusion  principle.  The  contendings  of 
our  Presbyterian  fathers  in  the  j^revious  century  involved, 
mainly,  the  great  doctrine  that  Christ  is  the  only  Head  of 
the  Church,  and  that,  in  the  things  which  pertain  to  his 
kingdom,  she  owns  no  king  or  lord  but  him.  And  in  our 
present  struggle  both  these  principles  of  strength  are 
united.  We  have  glanced,  however,  at  but  a  small  portion 
of  our  subject ;  it  is  of  great  extent,  and  as  important  as 
extensive ;  and  we  shall  embrace  an  early  opportunity  of 


PART    SECOND. 

It  is  a  widely-spread  belief  of  the  present  time,  and 
certainly  one  of  its  not  less  striking  characteristics,  that 
the  men  of  the  passing  generation  are  to  be  the  spectators 
of  a  series  of  stranger  changes  and  more  remarkable  revo- 
lutions than  have  been  witnessed  in  almost  any  former 

35 


410  TENDENCIES. 

period  of  the  world's  history.  We  say,  widely  spread.  It 
is  a  belief  that  professes  to  be  founded  on  Scripture,  and 
has,  in  consequence,  one  set  of  limits  in  the  far-diifused 
infidelity  of  the  masses.  Nay,  more,  it  professes  to  be 
founded  on  an  interpretation  of  Scripture  exclusively 
Protestant,  and  has  thus  another  set  of  limits  in  the  super- 
stitions of  Puseyism  and  Popery,  that  still  further  restrict 
its  area.  But  outside  these  lines  of  boundary,  inevitable 
in  the  present  state  of  Christendom,  —  outside  of  infidelity 
on  the  one  hand,  and  of  Popery  and  Puseyism  on  the 
other,  —  it  may  well  be  described  as  a  belief  extensively 
diffused.  There  is  scarce  a  country  in  the  world  in  which 
Protestantism  exists  as  a  living  faith,  from  America  to  Aus- 
tralia, and  from  Australia  to  Great  Britain,  in  which  it  does 
not  exist.  There  is  scarce  a  Protestant  body,  from  the 
Episcopalian  to  the  Independent,  from  the  Baptist  to  the 
Presbyterian,  in  which  it  has  not  its  zealous  assertors.  It 
may  be  found  in  minds  of  almost  every  calibre,  —  in  union, 
in  some  instances,  with  great  doctrinal  extravagances,  and 
active,  ill-regulated  imaginations,  —  united,  in  others,  to 
codes  of  belief  soundly  orthodox,  and  to  great  general 
sobriety  and  strength  of  judgment.  The  extent  to  which 
it  prevails  renders  it  one  of  perhaps  the  more  remarkable 
traits  of  the  religious  world  in  the  present  day.  Beliefs 
of  a  somewhat  similar  character  have  spread  not  less 
widely  at  other  times.  A  belief  that  the  end  of  the  world 
was  close  at  hand  had  immense  influence  in  stirring  up  our 
ancient  barons  and  their  retainers  to  engage  in  the  earlier 
crusades;  but  it  was  the  belief  of  a  barbarous  and  unin- 
formed age,  alike  remarkable  for  the  credulity  of  a  super- 
stitious laity  and  the  pious  frauds  of  an  unprincipled 
priesthood.  A  belief  obtained  very  generally  among  Pa- 
pists early  in  the  latter  half  of  the  seventeenth  century, 
that  the  year  1666  was  to  be  marked  by  some  great 
religious  revolution  and  the  coming  of  Antichrist ;  and, 
through  a  curious  coincidence,  the  Jews  pretended,  snys 
Voltaire,  that  their  Messiah   was  to  come  this  year,  —  a 


TENDENCIES.  411 

delusion  which  led  in  part  to  the  temporary  success  of  that 
singular  impostor  Sabbatei  Levi ;  while  in  England,  says 
Burnet,  "an  opinion  did  run  through  the  nation"  that  this 
year  was  to  usher  in  the  day  of  judgment.  But  the  belief, 
thus  various  in  its  character,  and  which  is  said  to  have 
originated  in  a  vulgar  misapprehension  of  the  mystic  num- 
ber in  the  Apocalypse  666,  was  restricted,  like  the  other, 
to  the  superstitious  and  the  ignorant.  It  is  a  peculiarity  of 
the  existing  belief,  that  it  is  entertained  by  all  our  more 
eminent  expounders  of  prophecy  in  the  present  time,  and 
that  the  writings  of  well-nigh  all  the  more  judicious  ex- 
pounders of  the  past  bear  upon  it  also.  The  Medes,  Til- 
lingasts,  and  Flemings  of  the  seventeenth  century  point 
direct  in  the  same  line  with  the  Keiths,  Brooks,  and  Bick- 
ersteths  of  our  own. 

The  fact  is  unquestionably  a  curious,  and  surely  not 
unimportant  one,  in  its  character  as  a  fact.  It  was  curious, 
even  as  a  fact,  that  a  belief  should  have  prevailed  through- 
out the  world,  in  the  days  of  Augustus  C?esar,  that  some 
very  great  personage  was  just  about  to  appear  upon  earth  ; 
nor  was  the  importance  of  the  belief  lessened  in  the  least 
through  the  mistakes  and  misapprehensions  to  whicli,  in 
some  instances,  it  led.  It  was  no  doubt  sufficiently  absurd 
in  Virgil  to  imagine  he  had  found  the  wonderful  child  for 
whom  the  whole  world  was  waiting,  and  under  whose  reign 
"the  serpent's  brood  shall  die,"  in  the  obscure  Salonius, 
the  infant  son  of  Pollio.  It  was  scarce  less  absurd  in 
Tacitus,  in  the  following  century,  to  hold  that  he  had  dis- 
covered the  king  "  who  was  to  come  forth  of  Judea,  and 
reign  over  the  whole  earth,"  in  the  Emperor  Ves))asian. 
But  perversions  and  misconceptions  such  as  these  militated 
in  no  degree  against  the  general  basis  of  reality  in  which 
the  belief  itself  was  founded.  It  had  its  foundations  in 
truth,  however  wrapped  up  in  the  empty  and  untangible 
obscurities  of  Sybilline  prediction,  or  mixed  Avith  the  gross 
and  palpable  delusions  of  an  impure  idolatry,  or  misdi- 
rected by  the  active  but  blind    ingenuity  of  philosophic 


412  TENDENCIES. 

historians  or  accomplished  poets.  And  the  incident  of  the 
eastern  sages,  as  recorded  in  Matthew,  shows  ns  that  it  was 
a  belief  through  which,  employed  aright,  the  Saviour  might 
be  found,  even  by  men  outside  the  pale  of  Judea.  This 
general  belief  of  the  period,  so  curiously  handed  down  to 
us  in  pagan  literature,  was  in  reality  a  warning  in  Provi- 
dence to  the  whole  world  that  the  King  of  the  world  was 
coming. 

Now,  we  speak  advisedly  when  we  say,  that  not  since 
that  time  was  there  any  belief  founded  in  prophecy  at  once 
so  widely  spread  and  entertained  by  men  of  such  general 
solidity  of  understanding  as  the  belief  of  the  present  age, 
to  which  we  refer.  It  has  no  doubt  been  exhibited,  like 
the  other,  in  many  a  various  phase  of  absurdity  and  delu- 
sion. All  our  readers  must  have  heard  of  Lady  Hester 
Stanhope,  who  died,  a  few  years  since,  amid  the  upper 
wilds  of  Lebanon,  in  the  full  expectation  that  she  was  to 
be  visited  there  by  the  Saviour  in  person,  and  who  kept  in 
her  stable  a  horse  on  which  he  might  ride.  They  must  be 
acquainted,  also,  Avith  the  extravagances,  in  the  same  line, 
of  the  followers  of  Campbell  and  Irvine.  They  may  have 
differed  widely,  too,  from  the  peculiar  views  of  the  vari- 
ously-composed body  known  as  the  "Personal  Reign  Men" 
of  the  present  day,  and  perhaps  thought  of  the  class  with  a 
sort  of  tacit  reference  to  the  "  Fifth  Monarchy  Men"  of 
the  times  of  the  Commonwealth.  We  question,  however, 
whether  it  would  be  in  any  degree  more  wise  to  slight  the 
belief  in  which  these  extravagances  have  originated  now, 
than  it  would  have  been  wise  to  have  slighted  the  belief  in 
which  the  extravagances  of  Virgil,  and  not  a  few  of  his 
contemporaries,  originated  in  the  reign  of  Augustus  Caesar. 
The  belief  which  furnished  the  Roman  poet  with  but  the 
occasion  of  a  mean  compliment  to  the  reign  of  a  cunning 
usurper,  led  to  far  higher  results  in  the  case  of  the  eastern 
sages ;  the  belief  which,  operating  on  the  crazed  imagina- 
tion of  a  Lady  Stanhope,  terminated  in  but  an  insane 
folly,  may  be  a  very  different  thing  indeed  in  the  mind  of  a 


TENDENCIES.  413 

Dr.  Keith;  and  we  think  there  can  be  at  least  no  harm  in 
iiroing  on  our  readers  an  examination  into  the  extent  to 
which  it  in  reahty  prevails,  and  of  the  data  on  which  it 
professes  to  be  founded.  There  is  at  least  nothing  fanatical 
in  the  advice.  It  can  be  in  no  degree  irrational  to  devote 
one's  self  humbly  and  prayerfully  to  the  careful  study  of 
that  portion  of  Scripture  regarding  which  Christ  himself 
has  so  emphatically  said,  "Behold,  I  come  quickly:  blessed 
is  he  that  keepeth"  in  mind  "  the  sayings  of  tlie  prophecy 
of  this  book."  There  is  but  one  book  in  the  whole  Bible 
to  which  the  blessing  2ya?'ticu!a?'hj  refers.  It  is  the  book 
on  which  this  belief  of  the  religious  world  professes  to  be 
specially  based,  —  the  belief  that  the  present  remarkable 
pause  among  the  kingdoms  of  Europe  is  but  a  pause  pre- 
ceding some  great  hurricane,  in  which  the  very  foundations 
of  society  may  be  unfixed,  —  that  the  sixth  vial  is  now  in 
the  course  of  being  poured  out  on  the  vast  river  Euphra- 
tes, to  dry  up  its  failing  waters  in  the  sight  of  peoples  and 
nations  that  have  peace  given  them  meanwhile,  as  if  to 
enable  them  the  more  carefully  to  mark  the  sign,  —  and 
that,  when  that  sign  shall  be  accomplished,  there  shall 
burst  forth  npon  them  a  storm  like  that  which  the  prophet 
saAV  in  the  cave,  when  "  a  great  and  strong  wind  rent 
the  mountains,  and  brake  in  pieces  the  rocks,  before  the 
Lord." 

The  inquirer,  in  the  course  of  his  search,  and  especially 
when  setting  himself  to  examine  rather  the  extent  and 
varieties  of  the  belief  than  the  grounds  of  it,  will  scarce 
fail  of  finding  many  curious  passages,  —  some  of  them, 
no  doubt,  very  extravag-ant,  some  of  them  eminently 
striking;  and  the  following  passage  among  the  rest: 
"When  the  beast  of  Rev.  xiii.  1  is  described,"  says  a 
writer  of  the  present  year,  "Ae  has  upon  his  ten  honis 
ten  crowns  y  but  when  the  beast  of  Rev,  xvii,  3  is  repre- 
sented as  carrying  the  woman,  he  still  has  ten  horns,  but 
he  has  not  a  croiooi  upon  any  horn^  And  who,  ask  our 
readers^  can  be  the  writer  of  this  wildly  democratic,  this 


414  TENDENCIES. 

fiercely  revolutionary  passage,— this  passage  that  in  reality 
outdoes,  in  its  quietness,  the  loudest  treason  of  the  most 
ostentatious  Chartism?  'No  democrat,  no  revolutionist, 
we  assure  them.  It  was  written  in  a  quiet  English  vicar- 
age, by  a  beneficed  clergyman,  —  a  man  who,  believing, 
indeed,  that  the  present  age  will  not  pass  before  all  the 
ten  horns  of  the  beast  shall  want  their  crowns,  has  yet 
evidently  no  other  interest  in  the  democratic  spirit  than 
that  which  he  takes  in  it  as  one  of  the  signs  of  the  times. 
That  such  passages  should  be  written  and  published  by 
such  men,  must  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  signs  of  the 
times  also,  and,  we  are  of  opinion,  one  of  not  the  least 
significant.  The  phase  which  it  presents  may  be  well 
deemed  extreme  ;  but,  as  one  of  the  many  phases  exhib- 
ited by  a  widely-extended  belief,  remarkable,  in  all  its 
multitudinous  aspects,  for  its  unity  of  general  scope  and 
direction,  we  deem  it  not  without  its  degree  of  startling 
interest. 

But,  in  speculating  on  the  effects  of  the  disestablishment 
of  the  religion  of  Scotland,  let  us  deal  with  the  probabili- 
ties of  the  event  as  if  no  such  belief  existed.  It  is  of  signal 
importance,  at  a  time  like  the  present,  that  a  conviction  so 
widely  spread  should  be  carefully  examined.  If  found  to 
be  solid,  it  may  greatly  influence  conduct;  but  it  must  not 
be  permitted  to  influence  calculation.  There  can,  how- 
ever, be  no  harm  in  referring  to  the  somewhat  shrewd 
circumstance,  that  the  calculations  and  the  belief  fill  with 
revolution  exactly  the  same  period  of  time.  He  must 
know  exceedingly  little  of  the  history  of  either  Presby- 
terian Scotland  or  of  revolution  in  general,  who  believes 
that  our  vexatious  Church  controversy  is  to  sink  at  once 
into  quiet  whenever  some  five  hundred  ministers  and  some 
five  hundred  thousand  people  shall  have  quitted  the  Estab- 
lishment. It  is  only  then,  properly  speaking,  that  the  war 
is  to  begin.  Revolutions  go  commonly,  like  twin  stars,  by 
pairs.  Thei-e  is  first  a  comparatively  quiet  revolution,  and 
then  a  much  more  noisy  one ;  and  the  civil  courts  have 


TENDENCIES.  415 

succeeded  in  accomplishing  only  the  quieter  of  the  two. 
They  have  succeeded  in  revolutionizing  the  constitution 
of  the  Church  of  Scotland;  and  when  they  shall  have 
disestablished  her,  the  work,  so  far  as  it  is  theirs,  shall  be 
complete.  But  the  other  revolution  is  still  altogether 
future.  The  revolution  of  Charles  I.  was  pretty  nearly 
accomplished  w^hen  John  Hampden  had  been  made  to 
suffer  fine  and  imprisonment  in  England,  and  the  service- 
book  of  Laud  had  been  introduced  into  the  High  Church 
of  Edinburgh.  But  then  came  the  counter-revolution,  and 
it  was  not  fully  accomplished  until  a  discrowned  head, 
melancholy  of  visage,  and  with  locks  prematurely  gray, 
had  dropped  with  hollow  sound  on  the  scaffold  at  White- 
hall. The  revolution  of  James  was  well-nigh  complete 
when  the  refractory  bishops  had  been  sent  to  the  Tower; 
the  counter-revolution  was  not  completed  until  after  Wil- 
liam had  landed  at  Torbay.  Charles  the  Tenth  brought 
his  revolution  to  a  close  when  he  had  revoked  and  disan- 
nulled the  constitution  of  France ;  but  it  took  three  days 
longer,  and  a  considerable  amount  of  hard  fighting  besides, 
to  bring  to  a  close  the  revolution  that  followed.  Such,  in 
short,  is  the  general  history  of  revolution.  Such,  we  are 
certain,  has  been  its  invariable  history  in  Scotland  in  con- 
nection with  the  Presbyterianism  of  the  country.  The 
war,  we  repeat,  instead  of  drawing  near  a  close,  is  but  on 
the  eve  of  beginning. 

It  will  be  carried  on  under  one  set  of  circumstances  in 
our  country  districts,  and  under  another  set  in  our  large 
towns.  Democracy  has  its  strongholds  in  the  one.  Conser- 
vatism in  the  other;  and  in  the  more  democratic  localities 
will  the  war  be  hottest  at  first.  All  the  churches  of  Aber- 
deen connected  with  the  Establishment  will  fall  vacant 
in  one  day.  With  these,  four-fifths  of  the  churches  of  Glas- 
gow, four-fifths  of  the  churches  of  Edinburgh,  and,  in  short, 
in  nearly  corresponding  proportions,  the  churches  of  almost 
all  the  other  large  towns  and  cities  of  Scotland.  Nor  is  it 
merely  ministers  that  these  churches  will  lack ;  they  will 


416  TENDENCIES. 

lack  also  congregations.  Moderatism  has  spoken  of  Its 
five  hundred  licentiates  patriotically  waiting  on  tiptoe  to 
rush,  each  like  an  ancient  Curtius,  into  the  five  hundred 
perilous  breaches  that  are  to  be  made  on  this  occasion  in 
the  Establishment.  But  it  has  not  yet  said  anything  of 
five  hundred  waiting  congregations.  The  gap  made  by  the 
congregations  must  remain  unfilled,  like  the  gaps  made  by 
the  Indian  tomahawk  in  the  cranium  of  Lieutenant  Les- 
mahago.  Now,  it  is  a  very  simple  fact,  but  a  not  unimpor- 
tant one,  that  it  is  the  congregations  who  pay  the  seat-rents; 
whereas  the  patriotic  licentiates,  instead  of  paying  the 
rents,  will  be  able  only  to  benefit  the  community  by  receiv- 
ing the  stipends.  It  is  also  a  fact,  that  in  Glasgow,  Paisley, 
Dundee,  Aberdeen,  and  several  of  our  other  large  towns, 
the  magistrates  receive  tlie  rents  with  one  hand,  and  pay 
the  stipends  with  the  other ;  and  we  are  afraid  it  would 
scarce  fail  to  put  the  good  men  somewhat  out,  should  the 
inveterate  old  habit  be  so  broken  upon  through  an  inability 
of  finding  employment  for  tlie  receiving  hand,  that  they 
would  have  to  restrict  themselves  to  the  use  of  the  paying 
hand  exclusively. 

Out  of  the  twenty-nine  pulpits  of  Ross-shire,  twenty 
"would  be  left  vacant ;  and  to  persons  at  all  acquainted  with 
the  character  of  Scotch  Highlanders  in  the  present  age  it 
is  quite  unnecessary  to  say  wdiat  would  be  the  nature  of 
the  ferment  which  such  an  event  would  occasion.  Our 
Highlanders  are  a  patient  people  :  they  have,  alas !  been 
much  trampled  upon,  and  they  have  borne  it  quietly.  But 
though  a  patient,  they  are  not  a  weak  people  ;  nor  are  they 
unintelligent.  They  have  got  names,  in  their  simple, 
expressive  Gaelic,  for  the  two  parties  in  the  Church.  They 
describe  the  clergy  of  the  one  party  as  "the  ministers  who 
care  for  their  souls,"  and  those  of  the  other  as  "  the  minis- 
ters who  do  not."  They  understand  perfectly,  too,  the 
true  nature  of  a  religious  Establisment.  They  regard  it, 
not  as  a  pension  fund  set  apart  for  the  sustenance  of  a  use- 
less clergy,  but  as  a  provision  made  for  their  benefit.     It  is 


TENDENCIES.  417 

but  a  few  years  since  a  party  of  them,  ejected  from  their 
homes  in  the  north  of  Scotland,  left  in  quiet  sadness  their 
mountain  hamlet,  on  their  journey  to  the  sea-port  from 
which  they  were  to  take  ship  for  America.  They  had  been 
l^reviously  ground  down  by  the  exactions  of  a  needy  and 
rapacious  landlord,  until  their  lives  had  become  ceaseless 
struggles  between  want  and  hard  labor;  and  the  feeling 
that  binds  Scotch  Highlanders  to  their  native  soil  had  been 
in  some  degree  weakened  in  consequence.  But  it  was 
their  native  soil  that  they  were  leaving,  and  so  they  quitted 
it,  as  we  have  said,  in  silent  sorrow.  In  their  onward  jour- 
ney they  passed  the  parish  church.  It  was  the  one  part 
of  all  the  country  that  was  theirs :  it  was  their  only  prop- 
erty. It  was  the  only  thing  that  the  landlord  had  not  been 
able  to  tax,  until,  like  the  hard-earned  fruits  of  their  labors, 
it  had  become  his  own.  It  was  theirs^  and  they  were  now 
leaving  it  forever.  A  host  of  recollections  rushed  upon 
them,  at  once  tender  and  sacred;  and  there,  beside  the 
much-loved  building,  and  amid  the  ashes  of  their  fathers, 
they  lifted  up  their  voices  and  wept.  And  it  is  men  such 
as  these  that  the  revolution  of  the  civil  courts  is  now  on 
the  eve  of  robbing  of  their  only  jjroperty.  It  would  be 
utter  madness  to  speak  of  resistance.  They  will  not  resist ; 
their  much-loved  ministers  have  taught  them  better ;  but 
let  these  twenty  churches  be  thrown  vacant,  —  let  all 
the  evangelistic  churches  of  the  Highlands  be  thrown 
vacant,  —  and  the  cause  of  the  aristocracy  in  Scotland  will 
count  weaker  from  the  date  of  the  event  than  it  had  hith- 
erto done,  by  thirty  thousand  fighting  men.  Conservatism, 
too,  may  give  up  at  least  the  northern  Highlands  as  a  polit- 
ical field  whenever  it  pleases.  One  of  the  first  effects  of 
the  revolution  in  country  districts  everywhere  will  be  a 
thorough  separation  between  the  intrusion  landlord  and 
the  non-intrusion  tenant.  Tlie  political  feeling  never  at- 
tained to  great  strength  among  tlie  rural  population  of 
Scotland.  It  is  the  proprietary  and  the  acres  of  the  coun- 
try that  have  hitherto  voted  at  elections.     Landlords  have 


418  TENDENCIES. 

been  in  the  habit  of  bringing  the  representatives  of  their 
estates  with  them  to  the  poll,  and  their  estates  have  inva- 
riably turned  out  to  be  of  the  same  mind  with  the  land- 
lords themselves.  There  is  now  a  new  element  introduced, 
or,  rathei",  an  old  element  revived ;  and  our  proprietary 
would  do  well  to  take  the  measure  of  its  strength.  "  All 
for  the  Church,  and  somewhat  less  for  the  state,"  was  a 
leading  principle  of  the  old  Scotch  whig,  as  drawn  by 
Belhaven  in  the  days  of  the  Union ;  and  it  will  be  found 
that  the  character  still  applies.  But  we  are  indicating,  and 
that  feebly,  not  so  much  the  first  beginnings  of  the  war  in 
our  country  and  Highland  districts,  as  the  directions  which 
these  first  beginnings  are  likely  to  take.  We  feel  that  we 
are  only  entering  on  our  subject. 


PART    THIRD. 

Is  the  reader  acquainted  with  that  singularly  amusing 
and  interesting  Avork,  the  "  Autobiography  of  Heinrich 
Stilling"?  Heinrich,  a  German  of  the  true  type,  —  for 
to  a  simplicity  so  extreme  that  it  imparted  a  dash  of 
eccentricity  to  his  character,  he  united  great  natural  pow- 
ers, and  acquirements  of  no  ordinary  extent  and  variety, 
—  had  passed,  in  his  eventful  career,  through  many  changes 
of  station  and  employment.  In  early  life  he  had  wrought 
as  a  journeyman  tailor  in  an  obscure  province.  In  his  first 
stage  of  advance  he  had  taught  a  village  school.  In  the 
second,  he  had  acted  as  a  sort  of  mercantile  clerk  and 
agent.  In  the  third,  he  had  applied  himself  to  the  study 
of  medicine,  and  practised  with  various  success  as  a 
physician  in  a  tenth-rate  German  town.  In  a  fourth,  he 
had  added  the  practice  of  surgery  to  that  of  physic,  and 
had  learned  to  couch  for  the  cataract.  Pie  had  received, 
in  a  fifth,  an  appointment  to  a  professorship  of  agriculture 
and  commerce  in  a  provincial  academy.  In  a  sixth,  he  had 
been  transferred,  first  to  one  university,  then  to  another 


TENDENCIES.  419 

of  higher  standing  and  celebrity,  and  distingnished  him- 
self by  his  lectures  on  the  economical,  financial,  and  statis- 
tical sciences.  Continuing  to  practise  gratuitously  as  an 
oculist,  he  acquired  a  degree  of  skill  perhaps  unequalled  at 
the  period  over  Europe,  and  became  the  honored  instru- 
ment of  restoring  to  their  sight  many  hundreds  of  the 
blind.  He  rose  high  in  fame  as  an  author;  did  much, 
through  the  exercise  of  his  very  popular  powers,  to  stem 
the  flood  of  neologic  rationalism,  which,  during  the  latter 
half  of  the  last  century,  deluged  the  continent;  asserted, 
in  his  writings,  in  opposition  to  the  cold,  inoperative  Theism 
disseminated  from  France  as  a  centre,  that  "God  must  and 
w^ill  be  w^orshipped  in  his  Son,"  and  that  "  in  Christ,  and  in 
Christ  only,  is  the  Father  of  men  to  be  found."  And, 
after  a  long  and  singularly  useful  life,  he  died,  about  thirty 
years  ago,  in  the  possession  of  the  esteem  of  all  good  men, 
with  a  long  list  of  honorary  titles  attached  to  his  name,  a 
popular  and  influential  writer,  a  leading  professor  of  the 
practical  sciences,  a  doctor  of  philosophy  and  medicine, 
and  private  aulic  councillor  to  the  Grand  Duke  of  Baden. 
We  refer  to  his  strangely  varied  and  surely  not  inglori- 
ous career  for  the  sake  of  an  illustration  which  it  furnishes, 
in  connection  with  one  of  the  more  striking  peculiarities 
of  his  character.  As  he  rose,  step  by  step,  in  his  course, 
he  was  ever  in  the  habit  of  seriously  inquiring  of  himself 
whether  he  had  yet  reached  the  proper  place  to  which 
Providence  in  an  especial  manner,  as  he  thought,  had  been 
guiding  him  from  his  youth  up.  He  had  ail  along  felt 
himself  gravitating,  through  the  force  of  events,  if  we 
may  so  speak,  towards  some  unknown  vocation,  the  true 
destiny  of  his  life,  —  as  the  sun,  with  all  its  jilanets,  is  said 
to  gravitate  towards  an  unseen  and  mysterious  centre, 
hidden  deep  in  the  profound  of  space ;  and,  believing  that 
there  awaited  him  some  peculiar,  specific  work  to  perform, 
he  was  solicitously  anxious  at  each  stage  to  know  whether 
he  had  yet  entered  on  the  exercise  of  it,  or  whether  he 
might  not  continue  to  await  the  call  of  duty  inviting  him 


420  TENDENCIES. 

to  some  other  sphere  of  action.  There  can  be  little  doubt 
that  he  carried  the  feeling  to  an  extreme  more  in  accord- 
ance with  the  peculiar  mysticism  of  the  German  than  the 
sober  common-sense  of  the  British  character;  but  the 
doubt  need  be  quite  as  slight  that,  in  the  great  majority 
of  cases,  men  err  on  the  opposite  side,  and  err  much  more 
fatally  than  Stilling  did.  It  is  much  to  know  one's  real 
place  and  vocation,  —  so  very  much,  that  half  the  blunders 
and  mishaps  which  occur  in  life,  including  all  that  is  ridic- 
ulous in  the  classes  that  shoot  above  their  proper  mark, 
and  almost  all  that  is  most  pitiable  among  the  classes  that 
shoot  beneath  it,  occur  just  in  consequence  of  their  not 
knowing  their  legitimate  sphere  and  proper  employments. 
They  fail  to  appreciate  their  true  destiny,  and  make  ship- 
wreck in  consequence;  just  as  those  who  failed  to  solve 
the  enigmas  of  the  Sphinx  were  destroyed  by  the  monster 
as  a  penalty  of  their  misapprehension. 

But  why  so  obvious  a  remark?  It  may  be  found  not 
without  its  bearing,  w^e  are  of  opinion,  on  the  present  crisis 
of  the  Scottish  Church.  It  may  at  least  serve  us  to  illus- 
trate what  we  might  be  perhaps  unable  to  make  equally 
plain  without  it.  The  disestablished  Church  of  Scotland 
bids  fair  to  take  up  a  place  not  occupied  by  any  Church  in 
Europe  since  the  times  of  the  Reformation ;  and  it  would 
be  well  that  all  sincerely  interested  in  her  welfare,  and  the 
work  which  in  times  past  she  has  been  honored  to  carry 
on,  should  not  mistake  it.  We  can  imagine  scarce  any- 
thing more  fitted  to  be  fatal  than  a  misapprehension  of 
her  true  place  —  her  proper  employment;  and  it  is  imjjos- 
sible  not  to  see  that  there  may  in  some  instances  be  con- 
siderable danger  of  such  a  misapprehension.  The  question 
which,  with  respect  to  himself,  cost  Heinrich  Stilling  so 
much  grave  thought  and  severe  self-examination,  should 
seriously  engage  every  member  of  the  Free  Church  of 
Scotland  with  resi3ect  to  her.  What,  in  the  present  great 
crisis,  is  her  proper  place  ?  —  what  her  true  vocation  ?  Of 
one  thing  we  may  be  assured :  the  separating  process  of 


TENDENCIES.  421 

which  her  contest  with  the  civil  powers  has  been  so  re- 
markably the  occasion,  and  which,  in  its  various  stages  of 
involuntary  classification,  serves  so  stiikingly  to  remind 
one  of  the  testing  trials  of  the  bauds  of  Gideon,  bears 
reference  to  some  very  important  end.  We  may  be  assured, 
further,  that  the  work  prepared  for  the  parties  which  it 
divides  will  be  in  meet  accordance  with  their  respective 
characters. 

Among  the  prose  writings  of  the  poet  James  Montgom- 
ery there  is  an  exceedingly  curious  little  piece,  less  knov>^n 
than  most  of  his  other  writings,  designated  an  "Apocry- 
phal Chapter  in  the  History  of  England,"  which  purports 
to  describe  a  state  of  matters  induced  by  the  total  ex- 
tinction of  Christianity  in  the  country.  There  are  many 
curious  incidents  narrated  in  it;  and  one  of  the  most 
curious  is  a  sort  of  missio7iary  enterprise,  undertaken  with 
the  design  of  restoring  the  vanished  faith,  by  the  country's 
more  prudent  skeptics  and  more  sagacious  men  of  the 
world.  So  long  as  Christianity  existed  among  them,  we 
are  told,  they  had  been  indifferent  to  it  at  best ;  some  of 
them  had  made  it  the  subject  of  not  very  respectful  jokes, 
—  some  of  them  had  openly  contemned  it;  but,  now  that 
it  was  gone,  they  suddenly  opened  their  eyes  to  the  start- 
ling fact,  that  a  vast  and  irresistible  mass  of  depraved, 
reckless,  hunger-bitten  intelligence  was  preparing  to  bear 
down  upon  them  and  destroy  them,  and  that  the  only 
barrier  efficient  to  protect  them  in  the  circumstances  was 
just  the  Christian  superstition.  That  barrier,  therefore, 
they  had  set  themselves  determinedly  to  reerect.  They 
went  out  to  preach,  says  the  poet,  in  "market-places  and 
town-halls,  and  on  oratorio  evenings  at  the  theatres ;  but, 
alas !  never  having  known  much  of  the  matter,  and 
having  cared  less,  —  having  the  misfortune,  too,  of  being 
pretty  widely  known,  and  of  being  conscious  of  it,  —  they 
drivelled  so  exquisitely,  in  their  confusion,  as  to  provoke 
at  once  the  scorn  and  the  wrath  of  the  multitude,  who 
presently  silenced  them  with  such  missiles  as  were  wont 

36 


422  TENDENCIES. 

to  be  thrown  on  better  men  in  the  days  of  Whitefield  and 
Wesley." 

Now,  the  incident  is  of  course  a  fictitious  one;  but  it  is 
not  on  that  account  without  its  large  admixture  of  truth. 
It  is  true  to  nature,  if  not  to  fact ;  and  the  country  will  by 
and  by  have  an  opportunity,  it  is  not  improbable,  of  seeing 
many  counterparts  to  it  among  the  real  occurrences  of  the 
time.  The  residuary  Establishment  will  find  it  as  neces- 
sary to  exert  itself  in  behalf  of  a  nominal  Evangelism, 
when  the  truth  shall  have  left  it,  as  it  was  found  necessary 
by  the  skeptics  of  Mont2:omery's  "Apocryphal  Chapter"  to 
exert  themselves  in  the  behalf  of  Christianity.  Moderat- 
ism  will  find  itself  in  circumstances  in  which,  for  the  first 
time,  its  very  existence  shall  have  to  depend  on  its  minis- 
terial exertions ;  and,  for  a  season  at  least,  violent  exertions 
will  be  made.  The  dead  body  will  be  galvanized  in  all  its 
limbs  and  features ;  and  if  the  wild  convulsions  and  con- 
tortions fail  to  resemble  life,  they  will  have  at  least  the 
merit  of  being  exceedingly  like  possession.  But  the  im- 
pulse, though  more  than  sufiiciently  energetic  in  the  com- 
mencement, will  not,  and  cannot,  be  permanent.  The 
stone  of  Sisyphus  will  return  to  where  it  gravitates.  It  has 
been  well  and  philosophically  remarked,  that  no  man  ever 
changed  his  true  character  merely  by  cleterniining  to  change 
it.  There  is  something  more  than  the  sheer  force  of  resolu- 
tion required.  And  what  is  ti'ue  of  the  individual  is  equally 
true  of  every  body  composed _of  individuals.  Moderatisra 
will  set  itself  to  work  with,  no  doubt,  a  dogged  determina- 
tion of  workino"  hard  and  Ion 2^.  It  will  strive  for  a  while 
to  transmute  into  activity,  by  sheer  dint  of  resolution,  its 
native  indolence  of  character.  It  will  set  itself  to  propel 
the  ponderous  axles  and  pinions  of  the  Establishment  by 
main  strength  ;  but  that  which  should  be  the  grand  mov- 
ing power  of  the  machine  it  will  assuredly  neglect.  It 
will  merely  set  its  shoulder  to  the  master  wheels.  The 
sole  moving  power  of  any  Church,  whether  established  or 
disestablished,  —  the   only  moving  power,  indeed,  that  is 


TENDENCIES.  423 

of  the  slightest  value,  that  is  not  rather  mischievous  than 
beneficial,  —  is  that  power  which  acts  through  converted 
ministers  and  office-bearers,  with  all  the  permanent  efficacy 
of  a  fixed  law.  And  as  this  moving  power  Moderatisni 
neither  has  nor  wishes  to  have,  its  exertions  must  of  neces- 
sity be  both  inoperative  and  short-lived.  The  remark 
refers  mainly  to  Moderatisni  of  the  genuine  type;  for 
mainly  to  Moderatism  will  the  throes  and  spasms  of  this 
period  of  convulsion  be  restricted.  The  Quietism  of  the 
residuary  Establishment  will  walk  softly,  according  to  its 
nature, — -then,  as  now,  appalled  rather  than  stimulated  by 
the  disruption.  Its  Rowism  will  continue  to  halt  lamely, 
like  a  patient  with  an  unset  bone.  Its  Politico-Evangelism, 
as  if  palsy-struck  for  the  time,  will  cower  helplessly  under 
the  consciousness  that  when  a  religious  ministry  has  lost 
its  character,  its  zeal  comes  to  be  regarded  as  but  the  mere 
ebullitions  of  an  offensive  selfishness,  and  that  to  remain  as 
quiet  as  possible  is  its  true  policy  in  the  circumstances, 
seeing  that  the  more  thoroughly  it  may  succeed  in  hiding 
itself,  the  better  may  it  hope  to  fare. 

Now,  it  would  be  much,  we  repeat,  for  the  disestablished 
Church  to  know  at  such  a  time  its  true  place  and  vocation. 
It  will  stand  on  high  ground,  and  this  not  merely  in  the 
eyes  of  religious  men  all  over  the  world,  but  also  in  the 
estimate  of  mere  men  of  honor. 

A  clergyman,  not  a  hundred  miles  from  Edinburgh,  who 
gave  in  his  adherence  to  the  resolutions  of  the  Convoca- 
tion, felt,  since  the  late  discussion  in  Parliament,  that  he 
had  taken  a  step  of  doubtful  prudence ;  and,  sitting  down 
all  alone,  with  the  glebe  in  his  front  and  the  manse  in  his 
rear,  he  resolved,  in  the  first  place,  to  let  his  signature  in 
the  fatal  list  stand  for  nothing,  and  to  exert  himself,  in 
the  second,  whenever  the  op})ortunity  should  occur,  in 
repealing  the  veto.  Not  quite  satisfied,  perhaps,  with  the 
resolution  at  which  he  had  arrived,  and  naturally  desirous 
of  making  up  by  the  gratulations  of  others  what  was  want- 
ing in  his  own,  he  bethought  himself  of  one  of  his  neigh- 


424  TENDENCIES. 

bors,  —  an  Intrusionist  heritor,  —  much  a  Moderate  and  a 
man  of  the  world,  who  had  sturdily  opposed  him  hitherto 
in  all  his  movements  on  the  side  of  the  Church,  but  whom, 
in  the  main,  he  had  found  respectful  and  not  unfriendly. 

I  must  just  call  on  Mr. ,  he  said,  and  tell  him  what  I 

have  at  length  determined  on  doing,  and  that  we  are 
much  more  likely  to  agree  for  the  future  than  hitherto. 
And  call  on  him  he  accordingly  did.  But,  alas!  there 
awaited  the  poor  man  none  of  the  anticipated  congratula- 
tions. The  heritor,  unluckily  a  gentleman,  and  acquainted 
with  the  code  of  honor,  though  ignorant  of  the  constitu- 
tion of  the  Scottish  Church,  heard  him  patiently  avow 
his  altered  sentiments  and  resolutions,  and  then,  seriously 

addressing  him,  "  Mr. ^,"  he  said,  "  hitherto  I  deemed 

you  and  your  party  in  the  wrong ;  but,  though  I  opposed, 
I  respected  you  ;  and,  regarding  you  as  honest  in  your  con- 
victions, I  had  pleasure  in  recognizing  you  as  my  minister. 
I  must  now  beg  leave  to  say  that  you  have  found  means 
to  change  my  opinion,  and  that  I  can  attend  your  minis- 
trations no  longer." 

We  instance  the  story  merely  to  show  that  there  are 
points  of  a  joractical  bearing  in  the  existing  contest  which 
even  mere  men  of  the  world  can  thoroughly  appreciate. 
The  man  honest  in  acting  up  to  his  convictions,  and  who 
can  make  large  sacrifices  for  the  sake  of  principle,  is  deemed 
at  least  an  honorable  man  by  the  numerous  class  ignorant 
of  those  higher  motives  which  bear  reference  to  an  unseen 
world.  With  the  members  of  this  class,  in  spite  of  them- 
selves, the  disestablished  Church  must  stand  high,  —  a  wit- 
ness to  the  importance  of  truths  little  known  or  heeded, 
but  which  are  destined,  in  these  latter  times,  to  grow  upon 
the  notice  of  the  world,  to  constitute  the  great  watchwords 
of  its  terminal  struggle  between  the  powers  of  good  and 
of  evil,  and  to  receive  their  final  confirmation  at  the  last 
day  from  that  adorable  Sovereign  of  all,  whose  right 
equally  it  is  to  rule  over  the  nations  now,  as  to  judge 
them  then.     With  the  men  who  in  reality  know  the  truth, 


TENDENCIES.  425 

whether  at  home  or  abroad,  the  position  of  the  disestab- 
lished Church  will  be  better  appreciated.  The  testing- 
trial  has  been  protracted  and  severe  ;  the  chaff  and  dust 
have  been  blowing  off  at  every  stage  in  the  process.  It 
will  be  a  chosen  and  well-tried  band  that,  at  the  last  stage, 
now  apparently  so  near,  shall  go  forth  from  the  Establish- 
ment, leaving  behind  them  the  residual  culm  and  debris; 
and,  let  party  assert  what  it  may,  the  sacrifice  ultimately 
will  not  be  under-estimated.  The  religious  feelings  of  the 
country  will  be  on  their  side ;  nay,  the  very  consciences  of 
their  opponents  will  be  on  their  side  also,  in  the  degree  at 
least  in  which  these  consciences  are  enlightened  and  awak- 
ened ;  and,  as  in  other  times,  death-beds,  despairing  and 
unblest,  shall  yield  an  impressive  testimony  in  their  favor. 
Now,  it  w^ould  be  of  vast  importance  for  the  Church  to 
be  fully  conscious  of  all  this.  In  her  new  circumstances 
she  will  be  exposed  to  peculiar  temptations  and  dangers ; 
and  there  is  nothing  which,  with  the  blessing  of  her  Great 
Head,  seems  so  suited  to  guard  and  strengthen  her  against 
tliese  as  a  right  apprehension  of  her  true  place  and  stand- 
ing. It  -would  be  well  for  her  to  know  where  her  strength 
lies ;  it  would  be  well  for  her  to  know,  also,  in  how  many 
different  ways  it  might  be  possible  to  make  that  strength 
less.  The  history  of  our  Scottish  seceders- — so  very  preg- 
nant a  one,  that  w^e  much  regret  it  has  not  yet  been 
written  in  a  style  worthy  of  it,  and  which  we  would  fain 
recommend  as  a  theme  not  unsuited  to  the  pen  of  the 
ablest  and  most  judicious  writer  of  the  party,  Mr.  M'Crie 
—  is  full  of  instruction  to  the  Church  in  her  present  po- 
sition. It  reads  its  significant  lessons  also  to  the  Church's 
opponents.  What,  however,  we  would  specially  advert 
to  at  present,  in  connection  with  it,  is  the  important  fact 
that  the  first  seceders,  goaded,  no  doubt,  by  that  persecu- 
tion which  raaketh  even  wise  men  mad,  suffered  them- 
selves, in  the  latter  stages  of  their  struggle,  to  lose  temper, 
and  that,  as  a  consequence  of  losing  it,  they  lost  also 
much  of  the  power  which  their  position  would  have  oth- 

.36* 


426  TENDENCIES. 

erwise  secured  to  them.  When  thrust  violently  out  of 
the  Church,  they  carried  with  them  the  warm  sympathies 
of  all  its  better  people.  They  had  taken  their  stand  on 
the  old  Presbyterian  ground,  and  had  maintained  the 
ancient  quarrel  nobly,  and  in  a  right  spirit.  Though  weak 
in  the  ecclesiastical  courts,  they  were  morally  strong,  for 
they  had  much  of  the  strength  of  Scotland  behind  them, 
and  the  high-handed  tyranny  of  Moderatism  was  exactly 
the  sort  of  thing  best  fitted  to  strengthen  them  yet  fur- 
ther. They  failed,  however,  fully  to  realize  the  true  nature 
and  importance  of  their  position.  They  quitted  the 
Church  under  the  irritation  of  defeat.  They  felt  that  they 
had  been  wrongously  overborne  and  beat  down,  on  ground 
on  which,  constitutionally,  they  had  a  right  to  stand ;  and 
we  are  much  mistaken  if  their  after  mishaps  and  dissen- 
sions may  not  be  traced  mainly  to  their  indulgence  in  this 
unhappy  feeling.  The  same  men  who,  during  the  series 
of  persecutions  to  which  they  had  been  subjected  in  the 
church  courts,  had  acted  with  uniform  temper  and  judg- 
ment, lost  all  command  of  themselves  when  they  came 
afterwards  to  discuss,  in  their  free,  independent  synod, 
points  o?  not  the  highest  possible  importance;  and,  after 
a  series  of  the  most  deplorable  and  ill-judged  wrangliugs, 
they  broke  up  into  separate  parties,  that  refused  to  hold 
all  communion  with  one  another.  This  lesson,  we  repeat, 
is  eminently  instructive.  -  There  is  much  which  ought  to 
be  guarded  against  in  the  irritation  which  persecution 
induces.  And  there  is  another  danger  to  be  avoided, 
against  which  it  is  j^ossible  the  first  seceders  were  not 
sufliciently  watchful.  It  is  perhaps  natural  for  men  who 
have  suffered  for  conscience'  sake  to  feel  that  they  have, 
as  it  were,  purchased  a  right,  by  their  sacrifices,  to  main- 
tain their  peculiar  0})inions  bluntly  and  uncompromisingly. 
The  state  induced  is,  for  obvious  reasons,  unfavorable  to 
a  spirit  of  conciliation  and  concession,  and  hence,  probably, 
in  part  at  least,  the  unhappy  diflTerences  of  the  first  se- 
ceders.    Men  who  had  submitted  to  the  loss  of  all  rather 


TENDENCIES.  427 

than  yield  to  even  the  supreme  judicatories  of  the  Church, 
felt  afterwards  very  little  inclination  to  yield  to  one  an- 
other. Now,  to  enable  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland 
rightly  to  profit  by  the  teachings  of  history  in  this  in- 
structive case,  there  seem  to  be  but  two  things  necessary 
—  a  sedulous  cultivation,  through  the  appointed  means,  of 
the  spirit  of  her  Master,  and  a  right  appreciation  of  the 
high  place  which  she  seems  destined  to  occupy. 

The  course  of  the  Church  is  becoming  plainer  every 
day ;  but,  like  every  other  course  which  every  other 
Church  on  earth  has  pursued,  it  is  not  quite  devoid  of  its 
shoals  and  quicksands,  on  which  the  unwary  might  make 
shipwreck ;  and  it  may  be  found  no  unprofitable  task  to 
map  out  a  few  of  the  more  formidable  of  these. 


PART    FOURTH. 

It  is  of  the  nature  of  Protestant  dissent  in  free  states 
in  which  there  exist  established  religions,  to  take  its  stand 
on  the  side  of  Liberalism.  There  are  principles  involved 
in  its  character  and  position  that  determine  its  political 
place,  if  we  may  so  speak,  with  well-nigh  the  certainty  of 
a  fixed  law;  and  it  must  be  sufficiently  obvious  that  if 
such  be  the  tendency  of  dissent  generally,  the  bias  in 
the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  cannot  fail  to  be  mightily 
strengthened  by  the  peculiar  circumstances  of  her  situa- 
tion. 

In  the  first  place,  she  must  necessarily  recognize  her 
disestablishment  as  a  consequence  of  a  most  unjustifiable 
revolution  eflfected  in  the  very  vitalities  of  her  constitution, 
through  the  aggression  of  the  civil  courts,  seconded,  in  the 
narrowest  spirit  of  partisanship,  by  the  existing  govern- 
ment. In  the  next  place,  it  is  impossible  not  to  see  that 
the  persecuting  influence  will  be  brought  to  press  hard 
upon  her,  especially  in  country  districts,  through  the 
agency  of  the  privileged  classes,  —  the  classes  who  possess 


428  TENDENCIES. 

the  lands  and  inhabit  the  manor-houses  of  tlie  country. 
It  is  obvious,  too,  that  there  are  points  at  which  the  resid- 
uary Establishment,  backed  by  the  power  of  the  secular 
courts  and  the  state,  will  be  made  to  abut  against  her 
with  harassing  and  irritating  effect.  Questions  will  be 
necessarily  arising  between  the  skeleton  Church  and  the 
national  Church  de  jiire^  in  which  the  powers  that  be  will 
prove  themselves  no  impartial  adjudicators  ;  and  thus  there 
bids  fair  to  be  induced  among  the  adherents  of  the  Free 
Church  a  spirit  of  disaffection  with  the  order  of  things, 
through  which  they  will  be  made  to  suffer.  There  are 
analogies,  too,  between  the  important  spiritual  rights  for 
which  they  contend,  and  the  secular  claims  asserted  by 
Liberalism,  which  must  exert,  in  some  cases,  a  sort  of  fra- 
ternizing influence.  The  cause  of  religious  liberty  ever 
involves  that  of  civil  liberty  also.  For  two  whole  centu- 
ries—  from  the  times  of  the  Reformation  until  the  earthly 
principle,  true  to  its  original  character,  degenerated  into 
mere  license,  —  another  name  for  tyranny,  —  and  demanded 
not  only  emancipation  from  the  rule  of  man,  but  uncondi- 
tional release  from  the  laws  and  government  of  God  also 
—  it  went  hand  in  hand  with  the  spiritual  principle.  With 
the  return  of  the  old  circumstances  —  circumstances  in 
which  the  pressure  of  persecution  will  be  again  felt —  the 
old  coalition  among  the  classes  who  suffer  will  be  again 
formed.  In  short,  the  inevitable  tendency  of  the  disrup- 
tion of  the  Establishment  will  be  to  increase  the  movement 
party  in  the  country,  by  imparting,  from  causes  such  as  we 
have  enumerated,  a  deep  tinge  of  radicalism  to  minds 
which,  but  for  that  event,  would  have  remained  under  the 
control  of  the  conservative  influences. 

Now,  what,  we  ask,  with  such  a  state  of  things  in  pros- 
pect, will  be  at  once  the  duty  and  the  interest  of  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland?  Here  is  a  powerful  current,  that 
threatens  to  set  in  athwart  her  course.  How  should  she 
steer  with  regard  to  it?  Exactly  as  the  mariner  steers, 
who,  in  o-ossing  the  Atlantic,  takes  into  account  the  influ- 


TENDENCIES.  429 

ence  of  the  great  Gulf  Stream,  and  directs  his  course  a  few 
points  higher  than  his  destined  port,  in  order  to  counteract 
its  effects  and  make  allowance  for  leeway.  If  the  Church 
become  in  all  her  congregations  what  some  of  our  Dissent- 
ing bodies  have  become,  —  a  mere  congeries  of  political 
societies,  — she  will  inevitably  make  shipwreck,  and  perish. 
There  is  no  more  dissipating  element  in  existence,  with 
regard  to  all  that  constitutes  the  life  and  strength  of  reli- 
gion, than  the  political  element. 

Let  us  look  steadily  at  the  matter.  The  Church,  we 
would  first  remark,  has  been  removed,  in  the  course  of 
Providence,  from  all  temptation  of  making  common  cause 
with  the  whigs.  She  has  scarce  more  to  do  with  them  as 
a  party  than  with  their  antagonists  the  tories.  Her  friends 
and  her  enemies  are  ranked  equally  on  both  sides.  Lord 
John  Russell  and  Sir  Robert  Peel  make  common  cause 
against  her.  The  Church  has  been  removed,  we  repeat,  from 
all  temptation  of  making  common  cause  with  the  whigs. 
She  has  been  taught,  in  a  manner  sufficiently  significant, 
that  her  cause  and  theirs,  however  assimilated  by  apparent 
analogies,  is  not  at  all  identical ;  it  is  in  no  degree  more 
identical  with  that  of  the  radicals  as  a  party ;  and  in  the 
history  of  her  struggle  for  the  last  three  years,  she  has  had 
proofs  in  abundance  that  Chartism  is  determinedly  hostile 
to  her.  It  would  seem  as  if  Providence,  in  the  course  of 
events,  was  shutting  her  out  of  that  political  field,  in  the 
mazes  of  which  she  might  otherwise  lose  herself  If  there 
be  a  perilous  current  threatening  to  bear  her  away  in  one 
direction,  the  breath  of  heaven  is  evidently  swelling  her 
sails  in  the  other;  and  we  think  she  would  do  well  to 
profit  by  what  must  be  deemed  more  than  mere  warning 
in  the  case,  —  what  must  be  regarded  rather  as  the  com- 
pulsory guidance  extended  by  a  wise  and  tender  parent  to 
a  child,  which,  if  left  to  itself,  might,  in  its  ignorance  and 
its  wilfulness,  go  grievously  astray.  There  is  a  call  in  Pro- 
vidence to  the  Church  that  she  dissipate  not  her  powers 
in  the  political  field. 


430  TENDENCIES. 

The  subject  is  so  important  that  we  may  be  permitted 
to  indulge  in  an  additional  remark  or  two  regarding  it. 
If,  during  the  last  twelve  years,  any  one  lesson  has  been 
taught  to  the  country  with  more  point  and  emphasis  than 
any  other,  it  is  the  lesson  that  no  one  should  trust  very 
implicitly  to  any  merely  political  party,  or  expect  very 
great  advantages  from  any  merely  political  change.  In 
the  course  of  that  eventful  period  we  have  seen  Whiggisni 
come  into  office  in  the  character  of  a  powerful  principle, 
and  ejected  from  it  in  the  character  of  a  weak  and  effete 
one  ;  and  it  must  have  required  but  ordinary  powers  of 
observation  to  see,  from  the  peculiar  data  furnished  during 
this  time,  that  such  must  be  forever  the  fate  of  Liberalism 
in  Britain,  until  an  age  arrive  in  which  the  majority  of 
both  statesmen  and  the  people  shall  be  pervaded  by  a 
spirit  of  vital  Christianity.  A  recurrence  of  cycles  has 
been  often  remarked  in  the  history  of  states  and  peoples, 
—  cycles  in  which  long  periods  of  despotism  are  followed 
by  comparatively  brief  and  stormy  periods  of  liberty  run- 
ning wildly  into  license,  and  in  which  these  are  succeeded 
by  long  periods  of  despotism  again.  Chateaubriand  has 
written  a  whole  volume  on  the  subject,  —  a  sparkling, 
if  not  a  very  solid  one,  —  in  which  he  shows  that  all 
history  is  little  else  than  a  record  of  these  cycles  of  alter- 
nate despotism  and  license.  They  form,  if  we  may  so 
s|)eak,  the  gusis  and  pauses  of  the  great  moral  storm  which 
sin  has  raised  in  the  world,  and  which  must  continue  to 
rage  until  He  who  stilled  the  tempest  of  old  shall,  when 
the  appointed  time  comes  round,  command  it  to  be  still 
also.  Now,  we  have  just  seen  one  of  these  cycles  revolve 
in  Britain  in  a  comparatively  still  atmosphere.  Among 
a  less  civilized  people,  or  in  a  worse  balanced  constitu- 
tion, it  would  have  taken  the  more  strongly  marked  form 
of  a  stormy  revolution,  preceded  and  followed  by  a  state 
of  despotism.  In  Britain  it  has  been  of  a  quieter  and  more 
subdued  character ;  and  we  may  see  in  its  workings,  in 
consequence,  some  of  the  laws  in  which  these  ever-recur- 


TENDENCIES.  4-11 

ring  cycles  originate  ;  just  as  we  may  see,  through  the 
unbroken  eddies  of  a  river,  those  irregularities  of  bank  and 
bottom  by  which  the  eddies  are  produced ;  whereas,  in 
the  wilder  rapids,  where  all  is  foam  and  uproar,  we  find 
the  disturbing  agents  concealed  by  the  very  turmoil  which 
they  occasion. 

Whiggism,  out  of  office  in  this  country,  and  purified  by 
being  much  and  long  in  a  minority,  addresses  itself,  in  all 
its  questions  of  real  strength,  to  the  natural  consciences 
of  men,  and  finds  a  ready  response  among  the  classes  in 
whom  no  selfish  interest  disturbs  the  free  exercise  of  tlie 
guiding  power  with  respect  to  the  particular  points  agi- 
tated. Nor  is  the  principle  to  which  it  appeals  —  the 
native  sense  of  right  —  by  any  means  a  weak  one,  in 
matters  in  which  it  does  not  meet,  in  those  who  entertain 
it,  with  a  sense  of  personal  advantage  as  an  antagonistic 
power.  The  cry,  "Emancipate  your  slaves,"  for  instance, 
was  just  the  proper  voice  of  this  natural  sense  of  right; 
and  it  was  a  loud  and  powerful  cry.  It  procured  eventu- 
ally the  good  which  it  demanded.  Be  it  remembered, 
however,  that  it  arose  from  men  who  derived  none  of  their 
wealth  from  the  thews  and  sinews  of  the  slave.  It  was  a 
cry  in  which  the  merchants  of  Liverpool  or  the  planters 
of  the  West  Indies  did  not  join.  And  why?  Did  these 
men  want  natural  conscience?  or  were  their  wives  and 
daughters,  who  made  common  cause  with  them,  less  influ- 
enced by  the  sense  of  right  than  the  other  wives  and 
daughters  of  England  and  the  colonies?  No.  We  are 
convinced  it  would  be  unjust  to  say  so.  They  were  per- 
sons of  just  the  average  rate  of  virtue;  but  their  sense  of 
right  was  controlled  and  overpowered  by  what,  in  the 
unrenewed  human  character,  is,  and  always  must  be,  an 
immensely  more  powerful  principle, — the  sense  of  personal 
advantage.  And  so  the  entire  class  —  though  on  other 
questions  of  right  and  wrong  that  did  not  involve  their 
personal  interests  they  might  and  would  have  been  suffi- 
ciently sound —  struggled  hard  to  prevent  the  emancipa- 


432  TENDENCIES. 

tioii  of  the  slave.  The  illustration  is  pregnant  with  those 
principles  which  serve  to  unlock  the  problem  of  the 
political  cycle.  Let  us  but  imagine  the  great  bulk  of  the 
men  who  called  loudest  for  the  emancipation  of  the  slave 
at  one  time,  becoming,  Ijirough  some  unexpected  turn  of 
fortune,  slaveholder  at  another,  —  their  possessory  fiselings, 
as  in  the  case  of  the  planters,  converted  into  principles  of 
greater  strength  than  their  sense  of  right,  —  and  we  have 
Whio^g^ism  before  us  in  its  character  in  and  out  of  office. 
Its  strength  in  the  opposition  is  the  strength  of  the  natural 
conscience ;  it  becomes  weak  in  office,  because  it  comes 
under  the  influence  of  the  selfish  and  possessory  feelings, 
and  because,  in  the  average  human  character,  these  inva- 
riably prevail  as  principles  of  action  over  the  conscientious 
ones.  And  be  it  remarked  that  this  character  of  average 
virtue  must  as  certainly  be  that  of  every  merely  political 
party  numerously  composed,  as  the  stature  of  the  members 
that  compose  it  must,  when  thrown  into  the  aggregate, 
and-  divided  by  their  number,  be  of  the  average  height,  or 
their  longevity,  when  similarly  treated,  be  of  the  average 
duration.  Individuals  may  attain  to  a  much  higher  rate 
of  virtue,  —  individuals  may  be  generous,  disinterested, 
much  influenced  by  the  better  motives,  and  little  moved 
by  the  worse,  —  but  bodies  must  continue  to  bear  the  aver- 
age character ;  bodies  must  continue  to  be  moved  more 
strongly  by  the  selfish  than  by  the  generous  feelings, 
until  a  period  arrive  when,  through  the  diffusion  of  a 
Christianity  not  merely  nominal,  but  vital  and  real,  the 
virtue  of  society  shall  be  elevated  to  the  high  level  of  the 
converted  man.  And  till  that  time  come,  the  political 
cycle  must  continue  to  revolve,  like  the  giddy  and  restless 
wheel  to  which  the  Psalmist  compared  the  wretched  unrest 
of  his  enemies,  exciting  hopes  to  produce  only  disappoint- 
ment, agitating  men's  minds  and  arousing  their  passions, 
but  leaving  their  characters  unimproved,  and  lessening  in 
no  degree  the  amount  of  their  unhappiness. 

Does  the  remark  seem  rather  declamatory  than  solid? 


TENDENCIES.  433 

We  are  convinced  it  contains  an  important  truth,  which 
bears  with  no  indirect  effect  on  the  true  vocation  of  min- 
isters of  the  gospel.  The  Free  Church  of  Scothxnd  has 
nobler  and  better  work  before  her  than  can  be  found  in 
climbing  the  political  wheel,  and  in  seeing  it  ever  and  anon 
descending  to  the  mediocre  level  above,  to  which  society 
cannot  permanently  rise  so  long  as  its  average  virtue  is 
that,  not  of  renewed,  but  of  unregenerate  nature.  She 
will  have  many  temptations  to  cast  herself  into  the  move- 
ment party.  It  would  be  well  for  her  to  know  that  they 
are,  in  almost  every  case,  temptations  to  be  resisted.  There 
is,  in  particular,  one  specific  form  in  which,  in  at  least  our 
country  districts,  temptation  bids  fair  often  to  present  itself. 
In  almost  all  the  rural  parishes  of  Scotland,  the  great  bulk 
of  the  people  will  be  determinedly  on  her  side,  and  the 
great  bulk  of  the  lairdocracy  as  determinedly  opposed  to 
her;  and  where  the  large  farm  system  prevails,  and  the 
political  franchise  is  enjoyed  by  only  some  five  or  six 
individuals  in  a  parish,  and  these,  mayhap,  all  Moderates, 
it  may  be  deemed  desirable,  in  order  to  give  her  weight  in 
the  political  scale,  that  the  franchise  should  be  extended. 
A  species  of  radicalism  threatens  to  be  thus  induced,  at 
one,  in  at  least  its  main  doctrine,  with  the  universal  suf- 
frageism  of  the  mere  political  radical  and  chartist;  and 
members  of  the  Free  Church  would  perhaps  do  well  to  be 
on  their  guard  against  it.  The  true  character  of  universal 
suffrage  cannot  be  adequately  tested  by  any  reference  to 
its  probable  style  of  working  in  a  quiet  Presbyterian 
parish,  or  to  the  moral  and  intellectual  fitness  for  the 
franchise  of  our  humbler  classes,  where  best  instructed, 
and  most  under  the  influence  of  religion.  It  must  be 
judged  with  reference  to  its  probable  effects  in  the  aggre- 
gate. The  popular  voice  in  the  Scottish  parish  might  be 
right;  but  the  important  question  to  be  determined  is, 
whether  the  popular  voice  all  over  the  British  empire 
would  be  right.  We  much  fear  it  would  not.  Civil  and 
religious  liberty  have  long  gone  hand  in  hand,  and  their 

37 


434  TENDENCIES. 

names  have  been  so  united  for  centuries  in  toasts  and 
watchwords,  that  we  can  scarce  mention  the  one  witliont 
calhng  up  the  otlier.  It  does  not  seem  at  all  unlikely, 
however,  that  there  is  a  time  coming  when  what  will  be 
termed  civil  liberty  shall  cease  to  tolerate  religious  liberty. 
The  question  bids  fair  to  arise,  Is  a  citizen  to  be  denuded 
of  his  rights  of  Christian  membership  simply  for  acting  in 
accordance  with  both  the  spirit  and  letter  of  the  law  of 
his  country?  —  a  law  constitutionally  enacted,  be  it  re- 
marked, by  the  people's  representatives.  And  thus  the 
case  promises  to  be  so  stated,  that  the  spiritual  liberty  of 
retaining  in  the  Church's  own  hands  the  power  of  the  keys 
will  be  deemed  not  only  an  aggression  on  the  civil  liberty 
of  the  subject,  but  an  offence  also  against  the  representa- 
tive majesty  of  the  people.  The  two  libeities  will  be 
brought  into  direct  collision  as  antagonist  powers.  That 
liberty  which  constitutes  the  heau  ideal  of  the  chartist  is 
invariably  of  an  Erastian  cast;  and  the  class,  if  such  there 
be,  who  may  long  for  universal  suffrage  on  the  Church's 
behalf  would  do  well  to  be  aware  of  the  fact.  There  are 
Voluntary  spirit-dealers  in  Edinburgh  that  sell  whisky  on 
Sabbath  under  the  protection  of  Mr.  Home  Drummond's 
act,  and  deem  it  a  very  absurd  thing  that  their  churches 
should  have  a  different  law  on  the  subject.  Their  churches 
have  a  right  to  make  the  fourth  commandment  a  test  of 
communion,  and  in  this  right  their  religious  liberty  is 
involved.  But  it  is  Mr.  Home  Drummond's  act  that 
involves  the  civil  liberty  of  the  spirit-dealing  members. 
A  persecution  originating  among  the  masses  on  principles 
such  as  these  might  be  a  very  terrible  one.  In  her  troubles 
hitherto,  the  earth  has  invariably  helped  the  woman.  It 
is  not  improbable  that  a  time  of  trouble  may  yet  arise  in 
which  the  earth  will  refuse  to  help  her. 

One  of  our  main  objections,  however,  to  a  course  of 
political  agitation  on  the  part  of  the  Church  is  the  dissi- 
pation of  strength  and  spirit,  if  we  may  so  speak,  wliich 
such  an  agitation  must  induce.     The  political  element  in 


TENDENCIES.  AuD 

this  country  is  rather  a  restless  than  a  strong  one.  It  acts 
vigorously  up  to  a  certain  point,  and  there  fails  at  once. 
The  contest  comes.  Votes  are  recorded  ;  the  stronger 
jDarty  gains ;  the  losers  sit  down  under  the  disappoint- 
ment, to  console  themselves  as  they  best  may;  and  this  is 
just  all.  There  are  no  great  sacrifices  demanded,  and 
none  made ;  and  a  habit  comes  to  be  formed,  in  con- 
sequence, by  no  means  favorable  to  those  larger  and  more 
serious  demands  which  in  times  of  trouble  religion  makes 
on  her  adherents.  It  is  a  fact  not  unworthy  of  notice, 
that  the  merely  politico-Evangelicals  of  the  Church  soon 
left  her.  They  voted,  spoke,  and  canvassed  for  her  reform 
bill,  the  Veto  Law,  regarding  votes,  speeches,  and  can- 
vassings,  as  just  the  proper  enginery  of  party,  and  then 
left  her  when  a  time  of  suffering  arrived,  because  suffering 
is  no  word  in  the  vocabulary  of  the  mere  partisan.  The 
spirit  of  the  ordinary  ten-pound  freeholder  wdio  records 
his  vote  in  behalf  of  his  party,  and  does  no  more,  is  an 
essentially  different  thing  from,  that  of  the  martyr ;  and  it 
is  the  spirit  of  the  martyr  that  Christianity,  in  times  like 
the  present,  demands.  We  would  not  have  indulged  in 
these  desultory  remarks,  were  the  danger  to  which  they 
refer  less  imminent.  It  can  scarce  be  necessary  to  add,  by 
way  of  qualification,  that  it  is  one  thing  to  become  a  mere 
political  society,  and  quite  another  to  perform  in  the  right 
spirit  political  duties.  Many  of  the  members  of  the  Free 
Church  must  possess,  as  members  of  the  community, 
political  privileges ;  and  to  these,  as  to  privileges  of  every 
other  kind,  a  sense  of  responsibility  must  attach.  They 
must  exercise  them,  and  their  voices  in  the  legislature  of 
the  country  must,  in  the  aggregate,  be  found  influential. 
In  a  constitution  such  as  ours,  the  strength  of  parties  must 
continue  to  fluctuate.  There  will  be  periods  of  action  and 
reaction  ever  recurring.  The  cycles  will  revolve  as  before. 
In  the  commencement  of  these  cycles,  when  the  spirit  of 
liberty  remains  still  fresh  and  unw^eakened  by  the  selfish 
influences,  permanent   advantages  in   the   cause   of  right 


436  TENDENCIES. 

will  continue  to  be  gained.  In  the  commencement  of  the 
last  cycle,  for  instance,  the  slave  was  emancipated  ;  and 
the  friends  of  the  Church  would  do  well  to  possess  their 
souls  in  i^atience,  and  watch,  in  the  Church's  behalf,  the 
commencement  of  the  next  cycle.  It  is  one  thing  to 
direct  to  right  ends  the  political  power  of  a  party,  and 
quite  another  to  be  carried  away  by  it. 

But  our  subject  lengthens  on  our  hands,  and  there  are 
various  other  points  on  which  it  might  be  well  to  touch. 
How  ought  the  Free  Church  to  deal  by  the  residuary 
Establishment?  —  how  by  the  Voluntaries? — how  by  the 
bitterer  opponents  among  the  lairdocracy  ?  What  other 
dangers  has  she  to  fear  besides  the  great  danger  of  dissi- 
pating her  power  and  lowering  her  character  in  the  politi- 
cal field  ?  How  shall  she  best  guard  against  the  growth 
of  a  narrow  and  exclusive  spirit?  and  on  what  objects 
mainly  should  she  concentrate  her  energies  ? 


PART    FIFTH. 

How  ought  the  Free  Church  to  deal  by  the  residuary 
Establishment,  and  how  by  the  Voluntary  body?  We  are 
convinced  that  very  great  danger  may  be  incurred  by  mis- 
taking the  true  course  with  regard  to  either.  A  war  of 
extermination  waged  blindly  against  the  one,  or  an  equally 
blind  union  formed  with  the  other,  for  but  the  purpose  of 
carrying  on  that  war  with  greater  effect,  could  scarce  fail 
to  be  attended  with  disastrous  consequences  to  the  Free 
Church  of  Scotland.  Her  strength  would  leave  her  in  the 
struggle,  and  she  would  sit  down  at  its  termination,  what- 
ever the  result,  in  a  lower  and  far  less  advantageous  posi- 
tion than  that  which,  when  the  disruption  takes  j^lace,  it 
will  be  assuredly  her  destiny  to  occupy. 

Let  us  remark,  in  the  first  place,  that  nothing  seems 
more  natural,  in  the  circumstances,  than  that  she  should 
rush  headlong  into  such  a  war.     It  seems  quite  as  much  a 


TENDENCIES.  437 

tiling  to  be  expected,  on  the  ordinary  principles  which 
govern  human  conduct,  as  that,  in  the  hour  of  her  ex- 
tremity, she  should  have  yielded  to  the  encroachments  of 
the  civil  power  rather  than  forfeit  her  endowments,  and 
have  set  herself  down  degraded  and  useless,  —  one  of  the 
less  respectable  sinecurists  of  the  state;  for  it  is  as  natural 
for  a  man  to  strike  when  he  is  injured,  as  to  cry  for  quarter 
when  he  is  overcome.  In  the  party  who  will  continue  to 
harbor  within  the  Establishment,  the  Church  must  recog- 
nize of  necessity  the  men  who  have  injured  her  most 
deeply ;  and  the  recent  agitation  of  the  Voluntary  contro- 
versy must  serve  to  draw  her  attention  to  the  exact  point, 
if  we  may  so  speak,  at  wdiich  the  retributive  blow  might 
be  dealt  at  least  most  readily,  if  not  with  most  effect. 
There  is  a  line  of  batteries  already  thrown  up  against  the 
Establishment,  simply  in  its  character  as  such,  conspicuous 
enough  to  catch  every  eye ;  a  numerous  and  formidable 
body  lie  entrenched  behind  these  ;  and  all  that  may  seem 
necessary  in  order  to  secure  the  overthrow  of  the  be- 
leagured  institution,  in  its  miserably  undormined  and 
exhausted  ■condition,  may  be  just  to  join  forces  with  the 
besiegers,  and,  with  numbers  and  artillery  increased  in  tlie 
proportion  in  which  those  of  the  garrison  will  be  dimin- 
ished, attempt  carrying  it  by  storm.  Independently,  too, 
of  this  natural  feeling  of  hostility,  and  of  the  circumstances 
which  may  well  serve  to  direct  it  into  the  Voluntary  chan- 
nel, the  Free  Church  must  inevitably  meet  with  an  amount 
of  provocation  from  the  skeleton  Establishment  which  Vol- 
untaryism has  never  yet  received  from  any  Establishment 
whatever.  There  wdll  be  a  struggle  for  the  possession  of 
the  people  between  the  Church  and  the  endowed  institu- 
tion, in  which  the  latter,  conscious  of  its  weakness  in  all 
that  constitutes  moral  and  religious  character,  will  call  to 
its  assistance  the  factor  and  the  landlord ;  the  same  coarse 
instruments  of  ]iersecution  which  were  employed  in  Eng- 
land in  the  middle  of  the  last  century  against  the  followers 
of  Whit^field  and  Wesley  will  be  set  into  operation  at  the 

37* 


438  TENDENCIES. 

bidding  or  through  the  influence  of  the  residuary  Estab- 
lishment in  Scotland,  against  disestablished  Evangelism ; 
and  in  wide  districts  of  country  the  state  endowment  w^ill 
take,  in  consequence,  the  very  rej^ulsive  form  of  a  sort  of 
government  grant  for  putting  down  the  gospel.  The 
Establishment  will  be  recognized  as  an  unsightly  incubus, 
squatted  in  all  its  leaden  weight  on  the  very  bosom  of 
religious  liberty;  and  the  feeling  for  its  destruction  bids 
fair,  in  consequence,  to  mount  very  high.  A  war  against 
the  Establishment  seems  quite  as  natural  in  the  circum- 
stances, we  repeat,  as  it  seems  natural  that  the  Church,  in 
her  hour  of  extremity,  should  have  quitted  her  hold  of 
her  spiritual  privileges,  and  clung  fast  to  her  endowments. 
But  we  can  trust  that  the  Free  Church  of  Scotland  is 
destined  to  baflle  the  calculations  of  mere  men  of  the 
world,  however  sagacious,  on  more  questions  than  one. 
They  have  already  seen  her  casting  into  the  golden  balance 
of  the  sanctuary,  with  its  one  scale  visible  to  the  material 
eye,  and  its  other  scale  invisible  save  to  the  eye  of  faith, 
all  her  w^orldly  possessions,  and  seen  what  to  them  must 
have  been  a  mysterious  and  unknown  quantity  outweigh- 
ing them  all.  And  we  anxiously  hope  that  those  who, 
calculating  on  data  such  as  we  have  indicated,  trust  in  a 
short  time  to  see  the  Free  Church  a  community  of  Volun- 
taries, are  destined  to  be  disappointed  as  signally.  We 
deem  it  of  paramount  importance,  at  a  time  like  the 
present,  that  she  cleave  to  her  Establishment  principles. 
We  say,  at  a  time  like  the  present.  We  would  have 
deemed  it  of  great  importance  at  any  time,  especially  in 
connection  with  that  testimony  which  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land, in  all  her  periods  of  trouble,  has  been  so  peculiarly 
called  on  to  maintain, —  her  testimony  for  the  Headship 
of  Christ,  not  only  over  the  Church,  but  over  states  and 
nations  in  their  character  as  such ;  and  with  this  testimony 
we  deem  the  Establishment  principle  closely  interwoven. 
But  we  are  much  mistaken  if  there  are  not  peculiar  cir- 
cumstances, in  the  present  time,  wliich  conspire,  on  other 


TENDENCIES.  439 

accounts,  to  render  the  maintenance  of  the  jorinciple  more 
important  politically  than  perhaps  at  any  previous  period 
since  the  Revolution. 

We  do  not  take  our  place  among  those  radicals  and 
chartists  of  the  day  who  can  see  nothing  admirable  in  the 
framework  of  the  British  constitution.  We  hold,  on  the 
contrary,  by  the  old-fashioned  belief  so  well  expressed  by 
De  Lolme,  and  so  invariably  entertained  by  all  the  more 
philosojihic  intellects  of  the  last  century,  that  the  consti- 
tution of  Britain  is  by  far  the  most  perfect  which  the 
world  has  yet  seen.  Many  a  favoring  })rovidence,  wiiich 
human  means  could  never  have  effected,  and  whose  remote 
consequences  lay  far  beyond  the  reach  of  human  sagacity, 
have  conspired  to  render  it  what  it  is.  It  would  be  as 
impossible  for  mere  politicians  to  build  up  such  a  consti- 
tution by  contract,  as  it  would  be  for  them  to  build  up  an 
oak,  the  growth  of  a  thousand  summers.  We  need  scarce 
add,  so  obvious  must  the  remark  seem,  that  the  man  or 
party  who  stands  upon  confessedly  constitutional  ground 
must  have  a  mighty  advantage  over  the  man  or  party  who 
stands  on  some  unrecognized  principle  which  one  individ- 
ual may  deem  good,  and  another  quite  the  reverse.  One 
British  subject  holds,  for  instance,  that  the  murderer  should 
be  put  to  death ;  another,  that  death  is  too  severe  a  pun- 
ishment for  any  crime,  even  for  murder  itself;  and  the 
point  of  difference  betwixt  them,  regarded  merely  as  a 
matter  of  argument,  leaves  much,  no  doubt,  to  be  said  on 
both  sides.  But,  for  all  practical  purposes,  how  immense 
the  advantage  derived  to  the  former  from  the  circumstance 
that  his  principle  is  a  constitutional  principle!  In  the 
same  way,  how  very  great  tlie  advantage  which  the  ten- 
pound  freeholder,  deprived  unjustly  of  his  franchise,  pos- 
sesses over  the  mere  chartist,  prevented  from  voting 
because  he  wants  the  qualification!  The  freeholder  can 
base  his  claim  on  constitutional  ground ;  the  chartist  can 
base  his  on  but  what  he  deems  the  intrinsic  justice  of  one 
of  the  Five  Points.    Now,  be  it  remarked,  that  the  Volun- 


440  TENDENCIES. 

tary  principle  is  not  a  constitutional  principle;  it  is  less  so 
than  some  of  the  Five  Points  even.  It  is  as  little  so  as 
that  of  the  man  who  contends  that  the  murderer  should 
not  be  put  to  death.  The  Establishment  principle  is  the 
constitutional  one ;  and  there  are  battles  in  prospect  which 
can  be  fought  on  this  ground  alone.  And  so  signally  im- 
portant do  these  conflicts  promise  to  be,  that  the  integrity, 
nay,  the  very  existence,  of  the  constitution,  may  come  to 
be  staked  upon  them.  Let  us  refer  to  just  two  of  the 
number,  —  one  of  these  a  highly  probable  occurrence,  the 
other  at  least  a  possible  one. 

It  is  far  from  improbable,  as  we  have  repeatedly  shown, 
that  the  skeleton  Establishment,  in  its  time  of  exhaustion 
and  peril,  may  call  to  its  aid  the  Episcopacy  of  England, 
and  barter  its  Presbyterial  forms  for  that  assistance  with- 
out which  it  may  find  it  altogether  impossible  to  subsist. 
Now,  on  what  ground,  we  ask,  could  the  people  of  Scot- 
land raise  their  protest  with  most  effect  against  a  transac- 
tion so  utterly  iniquitous  in  itself^  and  so  pregnant  with 
disastrous  consequences  to  the  country  ?  How  best  fight, 
on  this  question,  the  battle  whose  result  may  be  found  to 
determine  ultimately  that  of  the  great  battle  of  Protest- 
antism itself?  As  a  Voluntary  ?  The  Voluntary  has  not 
a  handbreadth  of  constitutional  ground  on  which  to  fight 
it.  His  quarrel  is  with  establishments  in  the  abstract, — 
a  quarrel  in  no  degree  less  alien  to  the  genius  of  the  con- 
stitution than  the  cause  of  the  chartist.  He  could  assail 
a  Scoto-Episcopal  Establishment  with  but  the  arguments 
which  he  has  already  employed  in  assailing  a  Scoto-Pres- 
byterian  Establishment.  He  could  but  propose  dealing 
with  it  as  the  chartist  proposes  dealing  by  the  House 
of  Lords.  But  in  the  event  of  an  invasion  such  as  we 
anticipate,  how  very  different  the  ground  which  the  assert- 
ors  of  the  Establishment  principle  could  occupy!  The 
opponent  of  all  establishments  could  appeal  to  but  a  sort 
of  unembodied  conviction,  which  he  himself  entertains,  — 
a  something  which  hovers  between  an  opinion  and  a  belief 


TENDENCIES.  441 

in  his  mind,  and  which  would  underlie,  of  necessity,  the 
insuperable  disadvantage  of  being  denied  the  status  of 
a  first  i^rinciple.  The  assertor  of  establishments  could 
appeal,  on  the  contrary,  to  the  plain  letter  of  the  constitu- 
tion. He  would  be  placed  in  the  circumstances,  not  of  the 
chartist,  alleging  that  he  had  a  right  to  exercise  the  fran- 
chise in  virtue  of  one  of  the  Five  Points,  but  of  the  ten- 
pound  freeholder,  asserting  that  he  had  a  right  to  exercise 
the  franchise  in  virtue  of  his  ten-pound  freehold.  He 
could  take  his  stand  on  the  treaty  of  union ;  he  could  take 
his  stand  on  the  unequivocal  pledge  embodied  in  that  sol- 
emn oath  which  all  our  monarchs  have  sworn  at  their 
accession,  from  the  days  of  Queen  Anne  to  the  days  of 
Queen  Victoria.  In  raising  his  protest,  he  could  remind 
the  advisers  of  the  Crown  that  high  treason  against  the 
constitution  is  still  a  capital  offence.  He  could  caution 
ministers  of  the  state  —  not  in  the  style  of  a  wild,  blood- 
thirsty democrat,  but  with  the  sobriety  of  a  British  subject, 
aware  of  his  rights,  and  determined  to  assert  them  —  that 
they  were  in  danger  of  rendering  themselves  amenable  to 
the  fate  of  Strafford.  To  political  Churchmen,  bent  on  the 
conquest  of  Samaria^  and  enamored  of  the  principles  of 
Laud,  he  could  point,  in  no  spirit  of  intolerance,  to  the 
bloody  scaffold  of  the  zealot.  So  long  as  Puseyism  was  in 
the  ascendency,  he  could  maintain  against  it,  on  constitu- 
tional ground,  a  war  of  appeals  and  protests;  and  he 
could  occupy  the  hour  of  reaction,  when  that  hour  came, 
in  tabling  his  articles  of  impeachment  for  high  crimes  and 
misdemeanors  against  the  constitution.  Surely,  a  vantage- 
ground  of  such  mighty  importance  is  not,  at  a  time  like 
the  present,  to  be  lightly  abandoned. 

Let  us  advert  to  just  one  point  more.  If  Popery  be  not 
destined  to  rise  in  this  country,  and  become  for  a  time  the 
dominant  power,  not  a  few  of  the  country's  best  and  most 
sagacious  men  have  greatly  misunderstood  the  mind  of 
God  as  revealed  in  prophecy.  And  certainly  not  since  the 
days  of  James  VII.  did  its  rise  seem  more  probable,  from 


442  TENDENCIES. 

causes  in  actual  operation,  than  at  the  present  time.  It  is 
of  importance,  surely,  in  preparing  for  the  coming  contest, 
that  those  remaining  ramparts  of  tlie  constitution  which 
were  reared  with  a  direct  view  to  it  —  reared  to  bear 
point-bhmk  against  Popery  —  shouhl  at  least  not  be  suf- 
fered to  fall  into  a  state  of  dilapidation  and  decay;  and, 
among  these,  where  shall  we  find  a  bulwark  half  so  impor- 
tant as  that  which  the  doctrine  of  the  Protestant  Succes- 
sion furnishes  ?  Hume  himself —  a  man  not  at  all  apt  to 
be  biased  in  his  judgments  by  religious  predilections  —  has 
characterized  tiiis  doctrine  as  a  leading  one  in  tlie  consti- 
tution ;  nay,  as,  beyond  any  othei-,  the  doctrine  tliat  fixed 
the  constitution.  He  has  described  it  as  the  grand  ex})e- 
dient  through  wliich  the  long  controversy  between  the  pre- 
rogatives of  the  Crown  and  the  rights  of  the  people  was 
terminated  in  favor  of  the  latter.  "It  obtained,"  he  says, 
"  every  advantage,  as  for  as  human  skill  and  wisdom  could 
extend."  "It  established  the  authority  of  the  prince  on 
the  same  bottom  with  the  privileges  of  the  people.  By 
electing  him  in  the  royal  line,  we  cut  off  all  hopes  of  am- 
bitious subjects,  who  might  in  future  emergencies  disturb 
the  government  by  their  cabals  and  pretensions ;  by  ren- 
dering the  crown  hereditary  in  his  family,  we  avoided  all 
the  inconvenience  of  elective  monarchy ;  and  by  excluding 
the  lineal  line,  we  secured  all  our  constitutional  limitations, 
and  rendered  our  government  uniform  and  of  a  piece. 
The  people  cherish  monarchy  because  protected  by  it ;  the 
monarch  favors  liberty  because  created  by  it;  and  thus 
every  advantage  is  obtained  by  the  new  establishment." 
The  philosopher  remarks  further  —  and  surely  his  testi- 
mony on  the  point  may  be  received  Avithout  scruple  — 
that  "  the  disadvantages  of  recalling  the  abdicated  fimily 
consisted  cliiefly  in  their  religion,  —  a  religion  prejudicial 
to  society,  and  which  affords  no  toleration,  or  peace,  or 
security,  to  any  otlier  communion."  Now,  be  it  remem- 
bered, that  we  live  in  a  time  when,  by  an  already  power- 
ful  and  still  rising  party,  this  doctrine  of  the  Protestant 


TENDENCIES.  44;' 

Succession  is  covertly  assailed,  and  the  revolution  tbrougli 
which  it  was  secured  assailed  not  so  covertly.  They 
already  designate  it  as  the  rebellion  of  1688.  The  conver- 
sion of  the  British  monarch  to  Roman  Catholicism,  did 
no  such  doctrine  exist,  would  be  a  glorious  event  in  the 
annals  of  Popery.  The  rising  apostasy  would  hold  in  the 
throne  of  the  united  kingdom  such  a  post  of  vantage  as 
the  whole  world  could  not  equal.  It  has  its  golden  dreams 
regarding  it  now,  — dreams  which,  if  destined  to  rise  into 
power,  it  will  assuredly  strive  hard  to  realize ;  and  the 
only  constitutional  point  on  which  Protestantism  could 
plant  itself  in  its  war  of  defence  would  be  just  the  point 
furnished  by  this  doctrine.  But  could  Voluntaries  occupy 
that  point?  Could  it  be  occupied  by  the  man  who  asserts 
that  religion  is  but  the  business  of  individuals,  and  that 
states  and  nations,  in  their  character  as  such,  should  have 
no  religion  ?  Assuredly  not.  If  religion  be  but  the 
business  of  individuals,  the  British  monarch,  in  his  charac- 
ter as  an  individual,  has  a  right  to  choose  a  religion  for 
himself.  If  states,  as  such,  should  have  no  religion,  on 
what  right  principle  can  it  be  held  that  states  should  deter- 
mine the  religion  of  their  sovereigns?  The  doctrine  of  the 
Protestant  Succession  falls  at  once  if  dissociated  from  the 
principle  of  national  religion.  It  is  a  doctrine  belnnd 
which  no  consistent  Voluntary  can  entrench  himself 

We  would  fain  press  on  every  member  of  the  Free 
Church  the  great  importance  of  the  establishment  princi- 
ple. To  lay  it  down  at  a  time  like  the  present  would  be 
such  an  act  of  madness  as  if  a  warrior  divested  himself  of  his 
armor  on  the  eve  of  a  great  battle,  and  then  entered  naked 
and  defenceless  into  the  fray.  It  furnishes  the  only  ground 
on  which  coming  contests  are  to  be  maintained,  and  the 
cause  of  Presbytery  and  of  Protestantism  asserted. 

But  it  is  one  thing  to  hold  resolutely  by  the  establish- 
ment principle,  and  quite  another  to  determine  on  the 
course  proper  to  be  pursued  respecting  some  existing 
Establishment.     The  government,  in  its  wisdom,  has  been 


444  TENDENCIES. 

pleased  to  endow  Maynooth.  It  is  quite  possible,  how- 
ever, vigorously  to  oppose  the  yearly  grant  to  that  institu- 
tion, without  being  in  the  least  a  Yoluntary.  A  Convo- 
cationist  may  hold  firmly,  on  simihir  grounds,  by  the 
establishment  principle,  and  yet  set  himself  in  determined 
opposition  to  the  residuary  Establishment.  Be  it  remarked 
that,  had  not  the  latter  been  converted  into  something 
which  he  deemed  exceedingly  bad,  he  would  not  have 
quitted  it.  He  foregoes  its  temporal  advantages  rather 
than  remain  in  connection  with  it.  Rather  than  acquiesce 
in  the  revolution  which  has  been  effected  in  it,  by  yielding 
allegiance,  in  matters  spiritual,  to  the  revolutionizing 
power,  he  gives  up  his  whole  living,  and,  thus  resembling 
one  of  those  French  royalists  Avho  preferred  submitting  to 
voluntary  exile  to  taking  the  oaths  to  the  Convention, 
what  principle  is  there  to  prevent  him  from  resembling 
these  royalists  still  further,  by  taking  up  arms  against  it? 
For  our  own  part  we  are  utterly  unable  to  see  any.  If  in 
reality  revolutionized  into  so  bad  a  thing  that  honest  men 
refuse  to  remain  within  its  pale,  even  though  their  whole 
means  of  living,  altered  in  character  by  the  revolution, 
be  held  out  to  them  as  a  bribe  for  doing  so,  on  what 
grounds  could  they  be  censured  for  making  war  on  it? 
We  have  but  one  reply  to  the  question,  —  we  can  see 
none. 

In  this,  however,  as  in  all  other  things,  it  may  be  well 
to  employ  St.  Paul's  distinction  between  the  expedient 
and  the  lawful.  A  war  of  the  kind  might  be  entirely  just, 
but  we  are  far  from  being  convinced  that  it  w^ould  be  in 
any  degree  expedient.  Unlike  the  Voluntary  controversy 
in  its  principles,  it  would  yet  resemble  it  in  its  effects.  It 
would  scarce  fail  to  assume  in  its  progress  the  secularizing, 
semi-political  form  which  would  best  consort  with  its  semi- 
political  character;  and  the  deep-toned  religious  feeling 
which  has,  we  trust,  been  strengthening  in  the  course  of 
the  present  controversy,  would  infallibly  evaporate  in  the 
progress  of  a  controversy  in  which  the  Free  Church  would 


TENDENCIES.  445 

have  a  great  many  more  hands  to  assist  her  than  now,  but, 
we  are  afraid,  much  fewer  hearts  to  pray  for  her.  Nay, 
that  very  assistance  would  be  of  itself  an  evil.  It  would 
mix  up  her  people,  through  the  influence  of  a  common 
object,  with  Destructives  and  mere  Voluntaries,  —  men  at 
one  with  them  in  their  hostility  to  the  residuary  Estab- 
lishment, but  thoroughly  at  variance  with  them  in  their 
principle  of  action ;  and  they  would  derive,  to  a  certainty, 
no  benefit  from  the  contact.  But  one  inevitable  effect  of 
the  controversy  we  would  deplore  more  than  any  of  the 
others.  It  would  surround,  as  with  a  wall,  the  residuary 
Establishment,  and  freeze  within  it  —  bind  uj),  as  if  in  ice 
—  many  a  well-meaning  man,  infirm  of  resolution,  and 
halting  at  present  between  two  opinions,  who,  were  the 
matter  managed  otherwise,  might  be  solicited  and  drawn 
forth.  Voluntary  opinions  were  decidedly  on  the  increase 
in  this  country  some  fifteen  or  twenty  years  ago.  The 
Voluntary  controversy  broke  out;  men  took  their  side; 
and  from  that  moment  Voluntaryism  ceased  to  increase. 
The  Free  Church  must  deal  more  wisely ;  nor,  in  this 
respect  at  least,  is  her  course  a  difficult  one.  There  are 
strong  religious  sympathies  operating  in  her  behalf;  she 
has  but  to  throw  herself  full  upon  these  by  engaging  heart 
and  soul  in  her  proper  work,  —  the  evangelizing  of  the 
country.  It  is  a  highly  dangerous  matter  for  two  vessels 
to  meet  in  rude  collision  in  the  open  sea,  —  so  dangerous, 
that  there  are  instances  not  a  few  in  which  the  effects  have 
been  fatal  to  both.  But  the  loadstone  rock  of  which  we 
read  in  the  Eastern  tale,  with  its  long  flight  of  stairs  and 
its  tower  atoj?,  was  in  no  danger  whatever.  It  did  not  go 
out  of  its  way  to  run  down  vessels ;  it  merely  exerted  its 
attractive  power,  while  they  were  yet  at  a  distance,  in 
drawing  out  their  nails  and  fastenings,  and  they  then  fell 
to  pieces  of  themselves.  The  Free  Church  would  do  well 
not  to  set  herself  to  run  doiori  the  residuary  Establishment, 
but  to  employ  her  attractive  influence  in  drawing  out  its 
few  remaining  fastenings. 

38 


446  TENDENCIES. 

If  it  be  comparatively  easy  to  say  how  the  Free  Church 
should  deal  by  Voluntaryism,  it  seems  a  still  more  simple 
matter  to  say  how  she  should  deal  by  Voluntaries.  The 
controversy  is  over  for  the  time  for  all  practical  purposes. 
It  divided  many  excellent  men ;  it  divided  also  many  men 
who  were  by  no  means  excellent.  Never,  in  this  respect 
at  least,  was  there  a  more  unfortunate  quarrel.  It  found 
the  pious  Churchman  linked  close  to  the  Evangelic  Dis- 
senter, and,  tearing  them  apart,  united  the  one  to  some 
malignant  tory,  —  a  rhighty  friend  to  establishments,  but 
a  bitter  hater  of  the  Cross ;  and  bound  the  other  to  some 
miserable  infidel,  not  more  an  enemy  to  religious  estab- 
lishments than  to  religion  itself  There  were  strange 
unions  effected  on  both  sides.  Of  the  five  northern  pro- 
prietors who  have  refused  the  Convocationists  sites  on 
their  lands,  three  w^ere  such  sound  Establishment  men 
that  they  stood  contested  elections  on  the  strength  of  their 
attachment  to  the  principle.  And  Voluntary  journalists, 
who  would  have  filled  whole  columns  with  frothy  indigna- 
tion had  these  proprietors  been  Irish  ones  and  the  Convo- 
cationists Papists,  have  given  a  place  in  their  pages  to 
their  insolent  and  repulsive  epistles,  without  the  addition 
of  note  or  comment,  as  if  the  religious  liberty  of  the 
country  was  in  no  way  involved  in  the  case.  The  fact  has 
thus  a  double  bearing,  and  is  illustrative  of  the  rubbish  on 
both  sides.  Be  it  remarked,  that  the  mingled  heap  of  grain, 
dust,  and  chafi*  which  the  controversy  gathered  up  on  the 
part  of  the  Church,  has  been  thoroughly  winnowed  of  late  ; 
whereas  the  corresponding  heap  on  the  Voluntary  side  still 
remains  what  it  was.  Providence  has  not  yet  seen  meet 
to  apply  the  fan,  —  an  obstacle,  it  may  seem,  in  the  way 
of  union.  It  is  probable,  however,  that  in  thus  speaking 
of  a  union  of  Voluntaries  and  Establishment  men  we 
make  use  of  wrong  terms,  —  we  make  use  of  terms  of 
diiference,  not  of  agreement,  —  and  fall  into  some  confusion 
of  idea  in  consequence.  With  the  Voluntary,  simply  in 
his  character  as  a  Voluntary,  a  devout  Churchman  can  have 


TENDEXCIES.  447 

no  sympathy  ;  with  a  Churchman,  simply  in  his  character 
as  a  Cliurchman,  tlie  devout  Voluutary  can  have  no  sym- 
pathy. Voluntary  and  Churchman  are  their  terms,  not  of 
agreement,  but  of  difference,  —  their  resjDective  battle-cries 
when  they  fought  against  one  another.  It  would  be  absurd 
to  dream  of  a  union  coextensive  with  their  designations 
of  difference ;  it  can  be  coextensive  with  but  their  senti- 
ments  of  agreement.  It  can  be  but  a  reunion  of  Christian 
with  Christian ;  not  a  heterogeneous  coalition  between 
mere  Voluntaries  and  mere  Establishment  men. 


PART    SIXTH. 

IIow  ought  the  Church  to  deal  by  her  bitterer  opponents 
among  the  land-owners  of  the  country?  We  very  recently 
l^ropounded  the  question,  in  one  of  our  serial  articles,  as 
worthy  of  consideration.  Only  a  i^vf  weeks  have  passed, 
and  the  hostility,  whose  scope  and  direction  we  could  but 
anticipate  then,  has  taken  a  determinate  course,  and  become 
embodied  in  action.  Events  move  quickly  in  these  latter 
stages  of  the  controversy,  —  so  quickly  that  well-nigh  half 
the  anticipations  of  the  "Tendencies"  have  been  already 
concerted  into  facts.  We  are  continually  reminded  of  the 
striking  figure  of  that  old  poet  who  complained  that  the 
language  was  growing  upon  and  covering  up  his  earlier 
writings,  as  the  flowing  sea  grows  upon  the  sand,  and  oblit- 
erates and  covers  up  all  its  tidal  lines  and  all  its  ripple- 
markings.  One  northern  baronet,  who  is  an  Episcopalian, 
denies  the  Convocationists  sites  on  his  lands  because  he 
himself  is  not  a  Convocationist ;  another  northern  baronet, 
who  is  a  philosopher,  denies  them  sites  on  his  lands  because 
they  weakly  prefer  the  Assemhhjs  Shorter  Catechism  to 
the  Catechism  of  Phrenology ;  a  third  northern  baronet, 
who  is  a  Presbyterian,  denies  them  sites  on  his  lands 
because  he  has  a  thorough  respect  for  them,  and  agrees 
with    them    in    all  matters   essential.      The    pretexts    are 


448  TENDENCIES. 

various,  but  the  overt  acts  are  the  same.  In  each  and  every 
case  the  rights  of  property  are  stretched  to  overbear  the 
rights  of  conscience,  and  the  principle  virtually  embodied, 
that  the  country's  acres  should  determine  the  country's 
religion. 

Now,  there  must  be  something  monstrously  wrong 
here  :  property  can  have  no  such  rights  attached  to  it.  A 
sophism  in  argument  may  escape  at  times  the  detection  of 
even  acute  intellects;  whereas  a  sophism  in  action  lies 
open,  from  its  very  nature,  to  the  detection  of  every  hon- 
est mind.  The  common  sense  of  mankind  is  sufficient  to 
ensure  its  discovery ;  and  even  Avere  common  sense  to  fail, 
common  feeling  would  fasten  upon  it  with  the  unerring 
precision  of  an  instinct.  The  sophism  in  action  never 
escapes ;  and  the  practical  sophism  of  our  northern  propri- 
etors, that  the  rights  of  property  may  be  so  stretched  as 
legitimately  to  overbear  the  rights  of  conscience,  has  been 
already  appreciated  in  its  true  character  all  over  Britain. 
Wherever  over  the  world  the  vital  influences  of  Christian- 
ity exist,  —  nay,  wherever  there  exists  common  sense  and 
common  honesty,  associated  with  the  tolerating  principle, 
—  policy  such  as  theirs  must  be  at  once  recognized  as 
grossly  offensive  and  fragrantly  unjust. 

There  is  an  element  of  strength  in  the  circumstance  that, 
in  order  to  estimate  aright  the  policy  of  such  men,  it  is  not 
at  all  necessary  one  should  hold  by  the  principles  of  the 
Convocationists.  Our  readers  are  not  Papists:  they  be- 
lieve, on  the  contrary,  that  the  conversion  to  Protestant- 
ism of  the  deluded  adherents  of  the  Man  of  Sin  would  be 
one  of  the  most  desirable  events  which  could  possibly  take 
place  in  the  Christian  world.  But  not  on  that  account, 
were  the  Protestant  proprietors  of  Ireland  to  deal  by  their 
Papist  tenants  and  cottars  as  our  northern  baronets  are 
dealing  by  their  Presbyterian  ones,  would  they  have  any 
hesitation  in  making  up  their  minds  regarding  the  real 
nature  of  the  transaction.  It  would  at  once  appear  to  them 
in    its   true  character,  as  an   act  of  coarse  and    repulsive 


TENDENCIES.  449 

Oppression;  and  ns  coarse  and  repulsive  must  such  acts  be 
ever  held  in  the  common  sense  of  mankind,  whether  the 
objects  on  which  they  are  brought  to  bear  be  Presbyterian 
or  Popish. 

In  stretching  the  rights  of  property  so  far  that  they  over- 
lay the  rights  of  conscience,  there  is  a  monstrous  sophism 
involved,  which  all  can  at  least  feel ;  and  the  circumstance 
has  served  to  originate  many  a  curious  speculation  regard- 
ing the  true  limitations  of  the  right  of  the  proprietor, 
among  a  people  never  yet  characterized  by  any  peculiar 
obtuseness  of  intellect.  And  certainly  the  age  of  the 
Chartist  and  the  Radical  is  not  quite  the  age  which  a  wise 
proprietor  would  choose  for  forcing  such  inquiries  on  the 
masses.  The  speculations  which  necessity  imposes  upon  a 
people  are  generally  very  acute,  and  rarely  inoperative 
in  the  end.  We  are  told  of  Bunyan  by  Sir  James  Mack- 
intosh, that  "he  foiled  the  magistrates,  the  clergy,  the 
attorneys,  who  beset  him,  in  every  contest  of  argument, 
especially  in  that  which  relates  to  the  independence  of  reli- 
gion on  the  civil  authority ;  for  it  was  a  subject  on  Avhicli 
his  naturally  vigorous  mind  was  better  educated  by  his 
habitual  meditations,  forced  upon  him  by  necessity,  than  it 
could  have  been  by  the  most  skilful  instructor."  There 
were  many  in  the  age  of  Bunyan  to  whom  the  despotism 
of  Charles  and  his  brother  rendered  such  meditations 
habitual;  and  wdien  these  reached  their  degree  of  ultimate 
intensity,  like  those  fluids  that  crystallize  at  a  certain  point 
of  saturation,  they  solidified  into  the  great  national  act, 
which  we  are  now  accustomed  to  designate  as  the  Revolu- 
tion of  1688.  It  is  unwise,  we  repeat,  on  the  part  of  the 
proprietary  of  the  country,  to  force  upon  its  people  a  train 
of  inquiry  regarding  the  rights  of  the  proprietor,  —  espe- 
cially unwise  at  a  time  like  the  present,  when  there  are  so 
many  disturbing  elements  to  lead  to  extreme  conclusions. 
Chartism  has  arrived  at  its  own  characteristic  findings,  — 
findings  which  it  embodied  last  year  in  its  great  petition ; 
and  were  the  infection  to  spread  among  the  soberer  and 

38* 


450  TENDENCIES. 

more  solid  classes  of  the  community,  the  effects  might  be 
fatal.  It  is  of  importance,  however,  —  for  the  strength  of 
opinion  always  depends  eventually  on  the  breadth  and 
soundness  of  the  foundations  on  which  it  rests,  and  there 
are  sacred  rights  of  property  against  which  no  man,  or  no 
class  of  men,  can  safely  transgress,  even  in  speculation,  — 
it  is  of  importance,  we  say,  that  the  people  of  the  Free 
Church  should  entertain  just  sentiments  on  this  matter, 
from  which  no  insolence  of  insult,  or  no  degree  of  oppres- 
sion, should  be  permitted  to  drive  them. 

It  was  one  of  the  enormous  hardships  to  which  the 
Puritans  of  England  were  subjected  in  the  reign  of  Charles 
II.  that  "  every  Dissenting  clergyman  was  forbidden  from 
coming  within  five  miles  of  his  former  congregation." 
Now,  there  are  proprietors  of  the  north  of  Scotland  who 
will  be  able,  if  they  but  carry  their  threats  into  execution, 
to  prevent  Presbyterian  clergymen  from  residing  within 
twenty  miles  of  their  former  congregations.  But,  monstrous 
and  tyrannical  as  such  a  power  may  seem,  has  not  every 
man  a  right,  it  may  be  asked,  to  do  what  he  pleases  with 
his  own?  and  does  not  the  power  of  the  proprietor  arise 
solely,  in  this  instance,  from  just  the  legitimate  exercise  of 
this  right  ?  Nay,  not  so  fist.  It  is  true,  there  are  cases 
in  which  a  man  may  do  what  he  pleases  with  his  own ;  but 
it  can  be  in  only  those  cases  in  which  the  effects  of  what 
he  does  terminate  with  what  is  his  own ;  and  not  even  in 
the  whole  of  these.  He  may  employ  the  bludgeon  which 
he  has  purchased  in  any  and  every  way  in  which  that 
bludgeon  is  alone  concerned ;  but  he  must  not  employ  the 
bludgeon  which  he  has  purchased  in  breaking  his  neigh- 
bor's head  ;  for,  though  the  bludgeon  be  his  own,  the  head 
is  not.  Nay,  further,  he  must  not  employ  the  bludgeon 
which  he  has  bought  in  cruelly  maltreating  the  horse 
which  he  has  also  bought.  There  are  thus  cases  in  which 
he  may  7iot  do  what  he  pleases  with  his  own.  The  law 
takes  into  account  not  only  the  sense  of  suffering  in  the 
irrational  animal  wliich  is  his,  but  also  the  feelings  of  his 


TENDENCIES.  451 

neighbors  with  regard  to  the  sufferings  of  that  irrational 
animal,  and  fines  and  imprisons  hira  for  outraging  them. 
The  rule  that  a  man  may  do  what  he  pleases  with  his  own 
is  a  rule  of  exceptions  and  limitations.  Now,  be  it  remem- 
bered that,  though  the  acres  of  the  north  country  belong 
to  the  proprietors  of  the  north  country,  its  religion  does  not 
belong  to  them.  The  bludgeon  is  theirs,  but  not  the  head ; 
and  if  they  violently  employ  those  acres  to  the  detriment 
of  that  religion,  they  do  so  at  their  imminent  peril.  Nay, 
by  putting  these  acres  to  other  than  the  recognized  and 
legitimate  use,  they  grievously  shock  and  outrage  the 
feelings  of  their  neighbors :  that  they  also  do  at  their  peril. 
If  it  be  at  all  just  to  protect  those  proper  feelings  which 
sympathize  in  the  sufferings  of  the  brute  creation,  does  not 
immutable  justice  decree  that  those  higher  sentiments  of 
the  soul  which  rest  on  the  Son  of  God  as  their  proper 
object,  and  those  rights  of  conscience  which  bear  reference 
to  his  law  exclusively,  should  be  at  least  equally  shielded 
from  violence  and  outrage?  The  rights  of  property  can 
be  but  coextensive  with  the  true  ends  and  purposes  of 
property.  The  possessor  of  a  field  tills,  sows,  and  then, 
that  he  may  reap  the  fruit  of  his  labor,  carefully  encloses 
it ;  and  the  law  affords  him  its  protection  by  punishing  the 
trespasser,  just  because  the  trespasser  interferes  with  the 
true  end  and  purpose  for  which  property  is  held.  Bat 
property  is  not  held  in  order  that  the  course  of  useful 
science  may  be  arrested  ;  and  so,  when  government  is 
employed  in  taking  a  trigonometrical  survey  of  the  king- 
dom, it  empowers  its  surveyors  to  enter  the  man's  field,  if 
necessary,  and  fix  their  theodolites  there.  Property  is  not 
held  in  order  that  an  important  branch  of  national  industry 
may  be  put  down ;  and  so,  should  the  field  be  on  the  sea- 
shore, a  herring-curer,  if  he  can  find  no  other  place  on 
which  to  heap  up  his  fish,  in  order  to  get  them  transferred 
to  his  casks,  may  fence  off  a  portion  of  it,  and  heap  them 
up  there,  giving,  of  course,  remuneration  fully  adequate 
for  the  produce  which  he  may  have  trampled  down,  or  tlie 


452  TEXDENCIES. 

general  deterioration  which  he  may  have  occasioned. 
Property  is  not  held  in  order  that  great  and  beneficial 
designs  may  be  successfully  thwarted ;  and  so  Parliament, 
if  it  see  meet,  may  empower  some  projector  or  joint-stock 
company  to  cut  a  deep  canal  into  the  centre  of  the  man's 
field,  or  to  span  it  over  with  some  vast  viaduct,  or  to  cut 
it  asunder  by  some  broad  thoroughfare.  The  rights  of 
property,  we  repeat,  are  but  coextensive  with  the  ends 
for  which  property  is  held  ;  and  he  wlio,  on  any  pretext, 
stretches  these  rights  so  as  to  render  them  subversive  of 
the  rights  of  conscience,  is  guilty  of  as  flagrant  injustice 
as  if  he  had  had  no  property  on  which  to  take  his  stand. 
He  is  simply  a  persecutor,  worthy  the  unqualified  detesta- 
tion and  abhori'ence  of  mankind ;  and  his  worn-out  plea, 
that  he  has  a  right  to  do  what  he  may  with  his  own,  is  but 
a  miserable  sophism,  in  every  way  worthy  of  the  deeds  of 
wrong  and  oppression  of  which  he  renders  it  the  apology. 
But  it  can  scarce  be  necessary  to  insist  on  points  of  a 
character  so  palpable  as  these. 

It  will  not  be  enough,  however,  thus  to  remove  the  bars 
and  obstacles  which  might  otherwise  prevent  the  current  of 
popular  opinion  from  dashing  full  against  the  persecuting 
proprietary  of  the  country.  So  great  is  their  power,  and 
so  many  the  means  of  annoyance  Avithin  their  reach,  that, 
had  the  Church  to  maintain  with  them  merely  a  political 
quarrel,  she  would  scarce  fail  to  be  o'ermastered  and  borne 
down  in  the  conflict,  however  unequivocally  in  the  right. 
The  tide  of  po[>ular  sympathy  would  set  in  too  late  and 
too  feebly  to  avail  her.  She  must  not  forget  in  what, 
under  God,  her  strength  lies,  —  that  she  has  a  hold  of  the 
religious  feelings  of  the  country  ;  and  that  wherever  she 
succeeds  in  enlightening  a  conscience  dark  before,  there 
also  does  she  of  necessity  succeed  in  making  good  a  lodg- 
ment from  wdiich  the  power  of  the  landlord  and  the  factor 
will  be  utterly  unable  to  expel  her.  She  is  strong,  doubt- 
less, in  the  popular  character  of  the  rights  for  which  she 
has  so  resolutely  and  so  devotedly  contended,  —  strong  on 


TENDENCIES.  453 

a  principle  somewhat  similar  to  that  through  which  the 
whigs  were  strong  when,  after  carrying  the  Reform  Bill 
by  a  bare  majority  in  the  lower  House,  they  dissolved 
Parliament,  and  appealed  to  tlie  country.  But  were  her 
strength  of  this  merely  semi-political  kind,  —  were  it  based 
on  but  the  popularity  of  her  principles,  —  it  would  be  a 
strength  insufficient  for  her.  It  would  evaporate  in  the 
furnace.  The  only  strength  which  can  ultimately  avail 
her  must  lie  in  the  unchanging  fealty  of  converted  hearts. 
"Wherever  she  is  rendered  the  honored  means  of  a  conver- 
sion, there  she  secures  an  inalienable  friend,  fitted  to  abide 
in  her  behalf  the  day  of  trial.  We  have  been  often  struck 
by  the  remarkable  figure  in  the  Apocalypse,  in  which  the 
witnessing  Church  is  represented  as  lying  slain  in  the 
great  city.  The  dead  bodies  of  the  two  prophets  are 
exposed  in  the  street ;  the  sounds  of  mirth  and  wassail 
ring  loud  around  them ;  and  there  is  rejoicing  and  giving 
of  gifts  because  they  are  gone.  What  more  hopeless  than 
a  cause  sunk  so  low  that  its  sole  representatives  are  two 
lifeless  carcasses,  cruelly  denied  the  repose  and  shelter  of 
the  tomb,  and  exposed  to  the  heartless  insults  of  an  un- 
generous enemy  !  They  lie  festering  and  dead  ;  a  moment 
passes,  and,  lo!  "the  spirit  of  life  from  God  has  entered 
into  them;"  they  stand  upon  their  feet;  o'ermastering 
astonishment  and  terror  foil  upon  all  beholders;  and  in 
the  presence  of  their  enemies  a  great  voice  from  heaven 
talks  with  them.  In  even  her  darkest  day  there  are  hopes 
to  which  the  Church  may  continue  to  cling.  The  numbers 
and  energy  of  her  assertors  will  bear  no  chance  proportion 
to  the  conversions  of  the  country;  and  one  of  those  seasons 
of  wide-spread  and  sudden  revival  which  are,  we  trust,  des- 
tined to  characterize  and  bless  the  latter  day,  would  have 
the  effect  of  raising  her  up  at  once,  like  the  resuscitated 
bodies  of  the  slain  prophets,  a  terror  to  her  enemies,  and 
a  wonder  to  all.  Her  strength  must  lie  in  the  conversions 
of  the  country,  and  her  cliance  of  success,  humanly  speak- 
ing, in  directing  all  her  exertions  under  an  abiding  sense 


454  TENDENCIES. 

of  the  importance  of  the  fact.     It  is,  in  truth,  the  grand 
secret,  which  her  friends  know,  and  her  enemies  do  not. 

Ere  we  conchide  for  the  time,  let  us  add  one  remark 
more.  The  true  way  of  utterly  ruining  the  cause  of  the 
Free  Church,  when  the  crisis  comes,  would  be  simply  to 
yield  to  those  feelings  of  excitement  which  in  some  dis- 
tricts it  may  well  occasion,  and  fly  in  the  face  of  the  law. 
Let  the  authorities  be  supplied  with  but  a  single  act 
through  which  a  charge  of  outrage  and  bona  fide  rebellion 
may  be  fixed  upon  the  Church,  and  there  will  be  means 
instantly  exerted  to  put  her  down,  which  have  not  been 
employed  in  Britain  since  the  times  of  the  persecutions  of 
the  Charleses.  A  few  ploughmen,  assisted  by  the  hedraVs 
son^  in  Culsalmond,  smoked  their  pipes  in  the  parish  church, 
and  broke  some  dozen  or  a  score  of  panes,  and  straightway 
a  detachment  of  the  military  were  marclied  into  Strath- 
bogie,  and  there  was  a  justiciary  trial  got  up,  at  which  an 
enlightened  jury  decided  there  was  nothing  to  try.  The 
soldiery  and  the  Justiciary  Court  would  be  but  imperfectly 
typical  of  the  means  which,  in  the  result  of  some  unhappy 
outbreak,  would  be  set  in  instant  requisition  to  crush  the 
dissociated  Church.  The  menials  of  Pilate  and  Caiapbas 
are  coming  out  against  her  with  their  swords  and  staves ; 
but  a  too  zealous  Peter  must  not  be  permitted  to  strike  in 
her  defence.  It  is  essential  to  her  well-being  —  perchance 
to  her  very  existence  —  that  all  the  outrages  should  be 
jierpetrated  by  her  opponents.  It  was  O'Connell's  most 
important  lesson  to  the  people  of  Ireland  that  they  should 
keep  their  tempers  and  the  peace.  We  would  warn,  in 
especial,  warm-hearted  friends  of  the  Church  in  the  High- 
lands,—  the  figliting  men  of  Scotland,  —  the  men  who,  in 
not  a  few  districts,  are  to  be  separated  violently  from  their 
beloved  ministers,  and  to  see  miserable  hirelings  set  in  their 
place,  —  that  they  may  do  much  for  her  by  their  prayers, 
but  nothing,  and  less  than  nothing,  for  her  by  their  swords; 
that  they  cannot  strike  a  single  blow  in  her  behalf  which 
will  not  be  made  to  descend  with  tenfold  effect  on  her  own 
honored  head. 


REMARKS."  455 


MR.  rORSYTII'S   "REMARKS." 

It  has  been  made  a  principle  in  selecting  these  articles  to  omit 
those  of  a  decidedly  personal  character.  A  vein  of  original  and 
powerful  humor  entered,  however,  so  largely  into  Mr.  Miller's  writ- 
ing in  defence  of  the  Evangelical  party,  that  it  was  desirable  to 
have  some  manifestation  of  it  in  the  present  volume.  The  following 
article  conveys  no  idea  of  Mr.  Miller's  keener  irony  and  more 
refined  satire.  It  is  in  his  roughest  style,  but,  so  far  as  it  goes,  it  is 
characteristic,  and  it  is  believed  that  its  broad  humor  can  now  be 
enjoyed  without  the  infliction  of  pain  upon  any.  —  Ed. 

There  has  appeared  within  the  last  few  weeks  a  very- 
remarkable  little  work,  on  our  ecclesiastical  struggle,  from 
the  pen  of  Robert  Forsyth,  Esq.,  advocate,  an  Edinburgh 
philosopher,  who  settled  the  principles  of  moral  science 
rather  more  than  thirty  years  ago,  and  who  has  now  very 
laudably  come  forward  —  impelled  by  patriotic  feeling 
and  a  strong  sense  of  duty  —  to  settle  the  Church  ques- 
tion. He  found  himself  ^^not  entitled^'^  he  says,  "to  look 
on  in  silence."  The  mere  capacity  of  doing  good  suggests 
always  to  well-regulated  minds  the  absolute  necessity  of 
doing  it;  and  so,  while  very  many  individuals  who  have 
not  written  essays  on  moral  science,  nor  acquainted  them- 
selves with  the  secret  causes  of  the  immortality  of  the 
soul,  have  felt  that  they  had  a  right  to  maintain  the  cliar- 
acter  of  silent  spectators,  Mr.  Forsyth,  finding  that  he  had 
no  such  right,  —  that  he  was  not  "entitled  to  look  on  in 
silence,"  —  has  been,  of  course,  precipitated  into  author- 
ship ;  and  his  pamphlet,  which  has  the  merit,  as  we  have 
said,  of  being  a  very  remarkable  one,  has  already  attracted 
the  favorable  notice  of  most  of  our  Edinburgh  contem];o- 
raries.  "A  very  excellent  and  seasonable  treatise,"  says  the 
Edinburgh  Advertiser^  and  characterized  by  "  great  ability 


456  MR.  FORSYTH'S    "REMARKS." 

and  research."  Assuredly  yes,  says  the  Evening  Post; 
"it  exposes  with  equal  profoundness  and  originality  the 
illegal  and  dangerous  proceedings  of  the  democratic  party 
in  the  Church."  "The  pamphlet  of  Mr.  Forsyth  seems  to 
us  an  able  one,"  adds  the  Scotsman ;  it  "sets  the  preten- 
sions of  the  non-intrusionists  in  a  very  clear  light,"  and 
"we  would  direct  attention  to  it,  as  presenting  the  ideas 
of  a  well-informed,  experienced,  and  religiously-disposed 
man."  And  the  Observer  tells  his  readers  that  it  is  a  work 
eminently  worthy  even  his  notice,  though,  from  a  press  of 
occupation,  he  has  not  been  able  to  notice  it  as  yet. 

Now,  all  this  is  certainly  high  praise.  It  has  been  often 
satisfactorily  shown  that  the  opinion  of  the  Scottish  news- 
jDaper  press  is  just  the  opinion  of  the  people  of  Scotland  ; 
of  course,  by  parity  of  reason,  the  oj^inion  of  the  Edin- 
burgh press  must  be  just  the  opinion  of  the  people  of 
Edinburgh;  and  here  have  we  our  intelligent  and  respect- 
able citizens,  whig  and  tory,  harmoniously  at  one  in  regard- 
ing the  pamphlet  which  Mr.  Forsyth  has  been  so  happily 
necessitated  to  j^roduce,  as  seasonable,  excellent,  able, 
original,  profound,  clear  in  the  light  which  it  casts,  and 
full  of  research,  —  and  in  eulogizing  Mr.  Forsyth  himself 
as  an  "  experienced,  well-informed,  and  religiously-disposed 
man."  Now,  it  would  be,  of  course,  absurd  on  our  part  to 
risk  an  opinion  in  direct  opposition  to  all  this.  We  may 
venture  to  remark,  however,  that  Mr.  Forsyth's  pamphlet, 
though  much  more  consistent  than  any  other  2:>i'oduction 
which  has  appeared  on  the  same  side,  and  though,  in  the 
main,  somewhat  more  amusing,  has  the  disadvantage  of 
being  not  quite  complete  in  itself.  Many  of  its  more 
striking  j^assages  bear  tacit  reference  to  the  doctrines  of 
his  great  philosophical  work,  —  reference  so  direct,  that,  to 
a  man  unacquainted  with  the  i^eculiarities  of  the  doctrine 
developed  in  his  "  Principles  of  Moral  Science,"  his  Church 
principles  must  often  aj^pear  either  altogether  obscure,  or 
in  a  very  considerable  degree  extreme,  if  not  irrational. 
And  this,  we  say,  is  decidedly  a  defect.     We  hold  that 


MR.  FORSYTH'S    *' REMARKS."  457 

Mr.  Forsyth's  pamphlet  on  the  Church  question  should  be 
in  every  respect  as  independent  of  his  great  philosophical 
work  as  his  great  philosophical  work  is  independent  of  his 
pamphlet  on  the  Church  question.  Mr.  Forsyth  must  be 
surely  aware  that,  in  this  unthinking  and  superficial  age, 
in  which  metaphysics  languish,  there  are  many  men  and 
many  women  deeply  interested  in  our  ecclesiastical  strug- 
gle who  have  yet  cultivated  no  close  acquaintance  with 
his  "  Principles  of  Moral  Science." 

"  The  truths  of  Butler  are  more  worthy  the  name  of 
discovery^''  says  Sir  James  Mackintosh,  "  than  any  with 
which  we  are  acquainted."  We  infer,  from  the  assertion, 
that  Sir  James  must  have  been  ignorant  of  the  ethical 
l^hilosophy  of  Mr.  Robert  Forsyth.  It  was  reserved  for 
this  man  of  high  philosophic  intellect  to  discover,  early  in 
the  present  century,  after  first  spending  several  years  as  a 
licentiate  of  the  Church  of  Scotland,  that  though  there  are 
some  human  souls  that  live  forever,  the  great  bulk  of  souls 
are  as  mortal  as  the  bodies  to  which  they  are  united,  and 
perish  immediately  after  death,  like  the  souls  of  brutes. 
Thinking  souls,  such  as  the  soul  of  Mr.  Robert  Forsyth, 
continue  to  think  on  forever;  but  the  vast  rabble  of  souls, 
that  either  do  not  think  at  all,  or  think  to  little  purpose, 
curl,  and  revolve,  and  expand,  for  a  very  little  after  they 
are  exhaled  from  the  body,  somewhat  like  the  puff  of  a 
cigar  in  a  quiet  atmosphere,  and  then  melt  away  into 
nothing.  Of  what  possible  use,  argued  the  philosopher, 
could  the  souls  of  the  mere  populace  be  in  another  world  ? 
In  the  present  they  are  of  very  considerable  value.  They 
constitute  a  sort  of  moving  power  to  the  bodies  of  our 
artisans,  clerks,  and  manuflicturers.  They  produce  hats, 
and  shoes,  and  broadcloth,  and  law  documents;  they  build 
houses,  and  keep  shops,  and  makes  sausages  and  suits  of 
clothes ;  but  in  the  future  state  they  would  be  of  quite  as 
little  value  as  the  steam  or  water  power  of  a  mill  or  engine 
dissociated  from  the  cranks  of  the  engine  or  the  pinions 
of  the  mill,  and  sublimed  to  the  dignity  of  a  soul.    Where 

39 


458  MR.  Forsyth's  "  remarks." 

there  are  neither  heads  nor  feet  there  can  be  no  demand 
for  either  hats  or  shoes.  No  attenuated  tailor-soul  will  be 
required  to  take  measure  with  his  figured  tape  of  the 
thinking  part  of  Mr.  Robert  Forsyth,  or  to  illuminate  his 
disembodied  seiisorium  with  rows  of  buttons.  He  will  be 
independent  of  broadcloth  and  of  bend  leather,  and  miss 
neither  his  clerk  nor  tlie  butcher's  shop.  All  must  have 
heard  of  tlie  famous  argument  once  maintained  between 
Corporal  Trim  and  Uncle  Toby  regarding  the  souls  of 
negroes,  and  how  the  honest  old  captain  came  finally  to 
the  conclusion,  that  if  the  blacks  have  not  souls  as  certainly 
as  the  wdiites,  "  it  is  a  sad  setting  up  of  one  man  over 
another."  Now,  a  similar  thought  seems  to  have  crossed 
the  mind  of  the  philosophic  Mr.  Forsyth  ;  nor  can  we 
imagine  aught  more  suited  to  render  a  person  of  a  benev- 
olent disposition  uneasy ;  but  a  further  discovery  served  at 
once  to  remove  the  painful  feeling.  He  discovered,  by 
a  singularly  ingenious  process,  that  the  happy  few  who 
inherit  immortality  achieve  it  for  themselves.  They  work 
it  out  simply  by  dint  of  tliinking.  The  ploughman's  soul 
does  not  sink  into  annihilation  simply  because  it  is  the  soul 
of  a  ploughman,  nor  does  the  shoemakers  soul  perish  qua 
shoemaking  soul.  They  perish  just  because  tliey  have  not 
been  exercised  in  tl)inking,  — just  because  they  have  not 
been  writing  treatises  on  moral  science,  or  pamphlets  on 
the  intrusion  side  in  the  Church  question.  The  sensoriums 
of  a  Burns  and  a  Bloomfield  may  be  living  yet.  If  souls 
die,  it  is  all  their  own  fiult.  They  do  not  take  exercise  to 
render  them  strong  and  hardy,  and  so  perish  the  moment 
they  step  out  of  doors;  just  as  children  over-delicately 
nurtured  and  kept  in  an  over-heated  nursery  are  killed  at 
times  simply  by  running  out  into  the  cold.  All  the  hardy, 
well-trained  souls  survive.  But  we  are  doing  less  tlian 
justice  to  Mr.  Forsyth  in  not  emi)loying  his  own  philo- 
sophic language. 

"  From  the  capacity  that  is  coiifeiTcd  upon  the  humriii  mind  of 


MR.  Forsyth's  »  remarks."  459 

advancing  In  perpetual  improvement,  we  conclude  that  it  is  destined 

for  immortality But  it  is  not  to  every  individual  that  this 

capacitij  or  this  destimj  belongs.  Some  minds  are  too  undiscerning 
to  perceive  the  value  of  intellectual  improvement.  Other  minds 
become  so  deeply  enamored  of  certain  pursuits  peculiar  to  their 
present  state,  that  they  will  be  unable  to  burst  through  the  fetters  of 
habit,  and  to  engage  in  the  study  of  what  is  good  and  excellent  in 
the  works  of  their  Maker.  These  minds^  having  720  employment  in 
which  to  occupy  themselves,  would  exist  hereafter  in  vain  ;  and  such 
is  the  constitution  of  mind,  that  if  it  is  not  employed,  it  sinks  into 
thoughtlessness,  and  loses  its  intelligent  character.  But  those  minds 
that  engage  in  the  pursuit  of  intellectucd  improvement,  or  in  the  study 
and  diffusion  of  science,  when  they  remove  from  this  world  will  find 
themselves  only  placed  in  a  better  situation  for  advancing  success- 
fully in  their  career.  Their  employment  cannot  come  to  an  end, 
for  it  is  infinite  ;  .and  their  minds  will  continue  forever  to  become 
still  more  active,  more  discerning,  and  more  enlarged.  It  is  no 
mean  prize,  then,  that  awaits  the  lovers  of  Wisdom.  She  is  lovely 
in  herself,  and  worthy  of  all  regard  and  pursuit ;  but  she  is  not  given 
to  man  as  a  bride  without  a  dowry.  Tlie  possession  of  her  communi- 
cates no  less  than  immortal  life.     This  is  the  highest  prize  in  the 

great  lottery  of  existence Let  it  never  be  forgotten,  then,  for 

whom  it  is  that  immortality  is  reserved.  It  is  appointed  as  the  portion 
of  those  who  are  worthy  of  it ;  and  they  shall  enjoy  it  as  a  natural 
consequence  of  their  worth.  This  is  a  part  of  the  plan  according  to 
which  the  Mighty  Artist  has  formed  the  universe.  Whatever  is 
defective  or  imperfect,  and  has  no  tendency  to  improvement,  will 
gradually  pass  away  and  disappear  forever ;  but  the  minds  that  shoot 
vigorously  towards  excellence  will  be  cherished,  and  endure  and 
flourish  without  end.  And  this  is  all  that  can  he  said  with  any  tolera- 
ble degree  of  certainty  on  so  obscure  a  subject."  —  Principles  of  Moral 
Science,  1805,  pp.  501,  502. 

But  though  beyond  this  Mr.  Foi'sytli  did  not  arrive  at 
certainty  (and  unquestionably  minds  of  a  lower  and  less 
philosophic  nature  could  scarce  have  carried  demonstration 
so  for),  he  was  enabled,  through  the  exercise  of  that  fine 
faculty,  imagination,  to  go  a  very  considerable  way  further. 
In  an  exquisite  allegory,  attached,  by  way  of  appendix,  to 
the  chapter  in  which  his  great  discovery  is  promulgated, 


460  MR.  FORSYTH'S    "REMARKS." 

we  are  presented  with  a  view,  singularly  graphic  and  pic- 
turesque, of  the  expectoration  of  souls.  The  reader  of  the 
"Principles  of  Moral  Science"  is  suspended  in  mid-air, 
with  Mr.  Forsyth,  in  the  character  of  the  "Angel  of  In- 
struction," beside  hini ;  and  on  the  earth  beneath  he  is 
made  to  see  all  the  dying,  brute  and  human,  engaged  in 
vomiting  souls.  The  view  somewhat  resembles  tliat 
whicli  the  adventurous  sailor  takes  from  the  maintop  of  a 
crowded  and  tempest-overtaken  transport,  when  horrible 
nausea  occupies  the  laboring  passengers  below.  We  see 
the  "  souls  of  dying  men  departing  from  their  bodies,"  and 
the  "  souls  of  dying  beasts."  We  mark  the  spirits  of  the 
beasts  coming  creeping  out,  like  half-sulFocated  wasps 
escaping  from  the  fumes  of  the  deadly  sulphur,  when,  in 
the  silent  twilight,  some  reckless  urchin  assails  with  fire 
and  brimstone  their  devoted  citadel,  and  then  squatting 
themselves  down  in  the  open  air,  and  quietly  evaporating; 
or,  to  employ  Mr.  Forsyth's  own  classic  illustration,  "melt- 
ing away  gradually,  like  the  cloud  rising  from  the  river, 
which  the  morning  sun  drinks  up."  Not  so  tranquil,  how- 
ever, the  process  through  which  the  spirits  of  unthinking 
mc;i  pass  into  annihilation.  "  The  souls  of  dying  men  are 
more  active,"  says  Mr.  Forsyth,  "than  the  souls  of  dying 
beasts,  for  they  spring  upward,  and  seem  to  look  around 
them,  as  if  seeking  for  some  work  wherein  to  labor."  They 
come  frothing  out  like  small  beer  in  the  dog-days,  just 
escaped  from  the  bottle,  and  wheel  round  and  round  in 
imeasy  and  short-lived  activity,  like  drops  of  boiling  oil 
sprinkled  from  a  dipped  rush-light  on  the  colder  oil  of  the 
lamp ;  or  like  vivacious  lady-birds  stuck  fast  upon  pins ; 
or  like  the  wicked  old  lady  in  Beckford's  Vathec,  the 
rapidity  of  whose  revolutions  rendered  her  altogether 
invisible.  But,  soon  squatting  themselves  down  in  utter 
exhaustion,  they  evaporate,  "  and  pass  away,  and  are  for- 
gotten, and  no  trace  of  them  remains."  Very  different, 
however,  is  the  destiny  of  vigorous  souls  of  profound 
thought    and    solid    acquirement, — the    souls    that    have 


MR.  Forsyth's  "remarks."  4G1 

"  engaged  in  the  pursuit  of  intellectual  improvement,"  and 
produced  treatises  on  moral  science.  They  "  never  lose 
their  activity,  nor  fall  asleep  at  all,  like  the  rest."  They 
visit  "the  sun,  and  the  moon,  and  other  worlds,"  expatiate 
at  laro-e  over  the  whole  earth  and  the  whole  sea,  make 
their  way  into  the  recesses  of  Mr.  Forsyth's  study,  and 
there  acquaint  themselves  thoroughly  with  his  opinion  on 
the  Church  question,  long  ere  his  invaluable  manuscripts 
have  passed  into  the  hands  of  the  publisher.  Well  has  it 
been  remarked  by  this  Edinburgh  philosopher,  that  "it  is 
no  mean  prize  that  awaits  the  lovers  of  wisdom." 

Now,  without  some  previous  acquaintance  with  this  fine 
philosophy,  there  are  passages  in  Mr.  Forsyth's  Church 
pamphlet  the  force  of  which  cannot  be  adequately  appre- 
ciated. And  hence,  we  urge,  the  incompleteness  of  the 
work,  regarded  as  a  whole.  The  happy  few  who  have 
mastered  his  "Principles"  must,  of  course,  feel  themselves 
quite  qualified  to  enter  into  the  deeper  meanings  of  his 
"Remarks."  But  why  write  for  only  the  hap])y  few? 
"Why  not  render  his  pamphlet  as  inde})endent  of  his  "Prin- 
ciples" <as  he  has  already  rendered  his  "  Principles"  inde- 
pendent of  his  pamphlet?  All  interested  in  the  Church 
question  are  not,  we  repeat,  deeply  read  in  the  metaphysi- 
cal discoveries  of  Mr.  Forsyth.  And  yet,  what,  without  a 
knowledge  of  the  great  discovery  whose  results  we  have 
just  communicated  to  our  readers,  is  the  real  force  of  a 
passage  such  as  the  one  in  which  Mr.  Forsyth  sets  himself 
to  annihilate  the  Yeto?  United  to  his  discovery,  it  is  all- 
potent  ;  dissociated  from  it,  it  is  a  piece  of  mere  common- 
place.    We  quote  from  his  pamphlet : 


"  A  young  man,"  says  Mr.  Forsyth,  "  after  employing  his  best 
years,  and  considerable  expense,  in  a  university  education,  and 
the  study  of  the  learned  languages  and  of  theology,  would,  according 
to  custom,  present  himself  for  examination  before  the  presbytery  of 
his  birth  or  residence.  He  is  declared  qualified  to  preach,  and  is 
allowed  to  preach  for  any  minister  employing  him.     Yet,  on  receiv- 

39* 


462  MR.  Forsyth's  "remarks." 

ing  a  presentation  from  the  Crown,  or  some  other  patron,  he  might 
find  his  prospects  blasted,  because  a  number  of  clowns  had  been 
pleased  to  say,  witlrout  assigning  a  reason,  that  they  dissented  from 
his  settlement,  whether  because  they  wished  some  other  individual, 
or  wantonly  acted  to  show  their  power.  Admission  to  the  com- 
munion table  affords  no  test  of  the  ability  of  a  man  to  decide  on  the 
qualifications  necessary  to  a  minister  who  is  to  instruct  men  in  the 
history  and,  principles  of  Christianity.  A  man  may  be  a  sincere 
believer  in  the  gospel,  and  of  the  most  decent  life,  who  yet  is  truly 
an  illiterate  person,  engaged  in  mechanical  labor.  To  say  that  such 
a  man  shall  have  power  to  ruin  the  prospects  of  a  learned  man, 
against  whom  he  can  state  no  well-founded  objections,  is  palpably 
absurd." 

Now,  if  this  passage  be  taken  simply  as  it  stands,  even 
Mr.  Forsyth's  warmest  friends  must  be  forced  to  allow  that 
it  is  by  no  means  a  striking  one.  Dr.  Cook  has  said  as 
mnch,  and  Dr.  Bryce,  and  the  Edinburgh  Advertiser^  and 
the  gentleman  who  in  the  Observer  writes  "  Columns  for 
the  Kirk."  But,  taken  in  connection  with  Mr.  Forsyth's 
great  discovery,  even  the  Witness  itself  must  confess  tliat 
it  does  all  it  was  intended  to  do,  —  that  it  annihilates  the 
Veto.  Let  the  reader  mark  well  some  of  the  phrases 
employed:  "Number  of  clowns,"  —  "admission  to  the 
communion  table  no  test  of  ability,"  —  "illiterate  person 
engaged  in  mechanical  labor."  These  are  all  phrases  of 
deep  signiiicancy  when  coupled  with  the  discovery  of  Mr. 
Forsyth.  In  his  "  Principles  of  Moral  Science "  we  are 
expressly  told  that  "men  who  spend  their  lives  in  the 
unremitting  drudgery  of  such  kinds  of  labor  as  require 
little  exercise  of  the  mind,  are  apt  to  sink  into  a  state  of 
indolence  and  stupidity."  "They  become  incapable  of 
thinking,"  it  is  added  ;  "and  if  at  any  time  they  make  an 
unusual  exertion  towards  it,  their  attention  soon  wavers 
and  fails,  and  they  speedily  relinquish  an  effort  that  is  so 
sensibly  above  their  strength."  They  are,  in  short,  men 
whose  souls,  like  the  souls  of  brutes,  perish  at  death. 
Mark,  next,  the  antagonist  class  of  phrases  used  in  con- 


MR.  FORSYTH'S   "REMARKS."  463 

nection  with  the  licensed  candidate  :  "  University  educa- 
tion," —  "  learned  languages,"  —  "  theology, "  —  fitted  to 
"instruct  in  the  history  and  principles  of  Christianity,"  — 
"qualified  preacher,"  —  "learned  man."  There  is  an 
achieved  immortality  of  soul  implied  in  the  very  terms. 
The  human  souls  that  do  not  die,  says  Mr.  Forsyth,  in  his 
"Principles,"  are  the  souls  that,  when  on  earth,  are  "en- 
gaged in  the  pursuit  of  intellectual  improvement,  or  in  the 
study  and  diffusion  of  science."  Now,  in  how  striking  a 
light  does  not  this  place  the  entire  question !  True,  it 
militates  with  much  directness  against  the  great  bulk  of 
our  Scottish  patrons,  —  men  whose  souls,  on  Mr.  Forsyth's 
showing,  could  be  of  no  manner  of  use  in  the  other  world, 
unless,  indeed,  the  other  world  had  its  mail-coaches  to 
drive,  and  its  dog-kennels  to  superintend,  and  its  tourna- 
ments to  ride  tilts  at;  and  whose  minds,  as  they  have  been 
doing  nothing  whatever  to  improve  and  strengthen  them, 
must  of  necessity  be  thin,  weak,  rickety  minds,  disposed 
to  evaporate  in  the  moment  of  expiration.  But,  then,  does 
it  not  make  more  than  amends  by  at  once  clearing  up  the 
line  between  the  rights  of  licentiates  and  the  claims  of  the 
people  ?  We  can  scarce  imagine  anything  more  prepos- 
terous than  that  plebeian  clowns  —  poor  illiterate  plough- 
men and  mechanics  —  men  whose  spirits -must  wriggle  in 
uneasy  consciousness  for  some  ten  or  twelve  minutes  after 
death  only  to  give  up  existence  forever  —  should  be  once 
permitted  to  stake  their  supposed  spiritual  interests  against 
the  well-based  temporal  welfare  of  some  meritorious  man 
of  learning,  who  has  studied  his  soul  into  immortality,  and 
w^ho,  in  following  up  his  high  destiny,  may  one  day  play 
somersaults  in  the  sun's  fiery  atmosphere,  or  disport,  de- 
lighted, amid  glowing  pumice  and  molten  lava,  in  some 
sublime  volcano  of  the  moon.  There  is  a  flood  of  light 
cast  here  on  the  cases  of  Dunkeld  and  Auchterarder,  and 
on  the  intrusions  of  Culsalmond  and  Marnoch. 

We  had  marked  several  other  passages  for  quotation  in 
the  pamphlet  of  Mi-.  Forsyth ;  and,  from  the  respect  which 


464  MR.  Forsyth's  "remarks." 

we  must  at  all  times  entertain  for  the  "ideas  of  a  well- 
informed,  experienced,  and  religiously-disposed  man,"  may 
possibly  again  return  to  them.  By  the  way,  is  it  not  a 
gratifying  circumstance  to  find  that  the  /Scotsmati  is  "begin- 
ning to  think  all  the  better  of  people  for  their  religion  ?  — 
nay,  that  he  now  actually  knows  what  religion  is?  There 
is  still  hope  of  our  contemj^orary.  He  had  a  lugubrious 
article,  some  few  weeks  ago,  on  the  damage  which  he  has 
sustained  in  his  circulation  from  the  misrepresentations  of 
ministers  and  the  insinuations  of  ministers'  wives.  They 
have  censured  him  as  Socinian,  —  they  have  denounced 
him  as  infidel.  But  their  hostility  will  now  surely  cease. 
They  may  be  assured  that  he  has  learned  to  set  a  high 
value  on  "religiously-disposed  men,"  and  to  know  them 
wherever  he  finds  them.  With  regard  to  the  philosophic 
Mr.  Forsyth,  our  reflections  are  more  melancholy.  He 
was  at  one  time  a  licentiate  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, 
and  yet  the  Church  lost  him.  There  are  respectable 
citizens  of  Edinburgh  who  have  heard  him  preach  in  the 
West  Kirk;  and  it  is  a  fict,  known  to  at  least  a  few,  that 
he  was  a  candidate,  on  one  occasion,  for  the  parish  of 
Liberton.  But  the  mortal  rabble,  who  have  not  learned  to 
think,  —  the  dying  illiterate,  born  to  plough  and  make 
shoes,  —  were  unable  to  value  him  as  they  ought;  and  so, 
setting  himself  to  the  study  of  the  law,  and  to  the  dis- 
covery of  the  true  principles  of  moral  science,  the  Church 
lost  him.  And,  save  for  this  untoward  circumstance,  this 
fine  old  Moderate  of  the  classical  model  of  Robertson  and 
Blair  would  be  now  a  leader  in  the  General  Assembly,  on 
the  side  that  lacks  talent  most.  How  tantalizing  the 
reflection  !  We  must  add  further  that  the  perusal  of  his 
writings  of  remoter  and  more  recent  date  has  awakened  in 
our  mind  a  rather  melancholy  thought,  which  we  scarce 
know  how  to  express.  "  Let  it  never  be  forgotten,"  he 
says,  in  promulgating  his  discovery  regarding  the  immor- 
tality of  the  great  bulk  of  human  souls,  —  "let  it  never  be 
forgotten,  that  whatever  has  no  tendency  to  improvement 


STATE   CARPENTRY.  465 

will  gradually  pass  away,  and  disappear  forever."  Now, 
it  is  a  solemn  but  not  the  loss  indisputable  fact,  that  there 
has  been  no  improvement  in  the  writing  or  thinking  of 
Robert  Forsyth,  Esq.,  advocate,  for  the  last  thirty-seven 
, years.  Nay,  tlie  reverse  is  very  palpably  the  case.  He 
writes  worse,  he  thinks  less  vigorously,  he  has  less  of 
taste,  his  style  is  rougher,  and  his  grammar  less  unex- 
ceptionable, than  when  he  fixed  the  principles  of  moral 
science  in  the  good  year  1805.  Alas  for  the  inference! 
but  we  at  least  have  determined  not  to  draw  it. 


STATE     CARPENTRY. 

It  has  been  remarked,  that  in  proportion  as  our  English 
dramatists  sank  in  the  genius  of  their  profession,  tliey  made 
amends  in  some  sort  by  becoming  adepts  in  all  the  merely 
mechanical  parts  of  it.  If  they  could  no  longer  attain  to 
the  sublime  in  their  poetry,  they  at  last  succeeded  in 
making  unexceptionable  thunder.  If  their  dialogues  were 
no  longer  easy  and  natural,  no  one  could  say  the  same  of 
their  side-scenes  of  painted  canvas  or  their  snow-showers 
of  white  paper.  If  wit  no  longer  flashed  athwart  the 
scenes,  never  in  any  former  time  were  their  flashes  of 
ground  rosin  equally  vivid.  If  their  descriptions  were 
tame,  so  were  not  their  draperies  and  drop-curtains.  Their 
plots  might  be  unskilfully  managed,  but  their  trap-doors 
were  wrought  to  admiration.  They  were  masters  of  cos- 
tume, if  not  of  character;  and  ghosts,  lions,  and  tempests, 
Nahum  Tates  and  Elkannah  Settles,  amply  occupied  the 
place  of  truth,  power,  and  nature,  Yv^illiam  Shakspeare 
and  Philip  Massinger.  The  poets  disappeared,  but  their 
successors,  the  playwrights,  were  ingenious  after  their 
kind. 

We  live  in  an  age  in  which,  apparently  for  some  pur- 
pose of  judgment,  the  more  prominent  actors  on  the  politi- 


466  STATS   CAEPENTRY. 

cal  stage  are  bnt  a  kind  of  mechanists  and  playwrights, — 
men  that  bear  the  same  sort  of  relation  to  true  statesmen 
that  the  Sliadwells  and  Settles  of  the  English  drama  bore 
to  its  Jonsons  and  Fletchers  of  an  earlier  period.  There 
is  this  difference,  however,  that  whereas  the  [)laywrights 
were  skilful  after  their  kind,  our  mechanical  statesmen  are 
not.  They  are  by  no  means  mechanical  statesmen  of  a 
high  degree  of  skill.  Their  trap-doors  creak  in  the  open- 
ing ;  their  ghosts  awkwardly  drop  the  winding-sheet  in 
the  rising ;  their  lions  betray  the  pasteboard ;  when  they 
thunder,  we  detect  tlie  roll  of  the  rusted  shot  in  the  iron 
kettle ;  and  when  they  lighten,  tlie  rosin  puffs  unkindled 
in  a  cloud  of  white  dust  athwart  the  stage.  They  are  state- 
wrights  of  an  inferior  grade. 

Never  was  there  an  age  or  country  in  which  problems 
of  more  signal  difficulty  or  of  more  awful  importance  rose 
to  demand  the  practical  solution  of  the  true  statesman 
than  rise  in  Britain  at  the  present  day.  The  masses  are 
sinking  everywhere  into  perilous  ignorance, —  degenerating 
into  a  vast  brute  power,  terrible  of  fang  and  claw,  and 
more  terrible  still  in  the  brute  heart  that  is  growing  up 
within  it,  growling  in  its  den  in  uneasy  hunger,  and  threat- 
ening to  burst  out,  that  it  may  lap  the  blood  and  tear  the 
entrails  of  these  poor  state  carpenters.  And  lo !  they  are 
setting  themselves  to  see  whether  they  cannot  smooth 
down  the  shag  of  its  degenerate  nature,  and  humanize  its 
heart  again  by  a  scheme  of  Puseyite  education.  They  are 
trying  whether  it  may  not  be  tamed  into  quiet  and  good 
order  just  by  parading  a  few  ghosts  in  front  of  it,  —  old, 
dry,  bloodless  gliosts  of  the  apostolic  succession,  baptismal 
regeneration,  and  the  real  presence,  —  and  by  getting  up 
behind  these  a  picturesque  screen  of  pillared  aisles  and 
transepts,  crosses  and  choirs,  organs  and  stained  glass. 
They  have  fallen,  in  their  wisdom,  on  a  scheme  resembling 
that  of  the  ingenious  breeder  of  live  stock,  who  fixed  bits 
of  looking-glass  in  the  walls  of  his  pig-styes,  immediately 
behind  the  feeding-troughs,  that  the  animals  within  might 


STATE   CARPENTRY.  467 

occupy  their  whole  minds  in  admiring  the  impalpable 
images,  and  feed,  in  consequence,  with  the  quiet  and  profit 
which  a  state  of  pleasurable  excitement  induces.  Between 
the  two  schemes,  however,  there  obtains  this  mighty  dif- 
ference, that  whereas  the  swine-feeder  associated  his  bodi- 
less images  with  his  well-filled  feeding-troughs,  our  less 
intelligent  governors  trust  to  the  bodiless  images  alone, 
without  taking  into  account  in  what  manner  the  poor  brute 
power  is  to  be  fed,  or  caring  a  farthing  whether  it  is  to 
feed  or  no.  And  so  they  strain  hard  in  their  Factory  Bill 
to  raise  their  obsolete  images, — their  old  scarecrow  ghosts, 
—  things  in  which  they  themselves,  with  reference  to  them- 
selves, have  no  faith  whatever.  But  they  lack  the  true  art 
of  the  playwright;  and,  lo!  amid  the  clapping  of  trap- 
doors and  the  creaking  of  hinges,  the  wretched  design,  as 
defective  in  its  management  as  deplorable  in  its  concep- 
tion, stands  palpable  to  all.  And  then,  how  exquisitely 
mean  their  style  of  dealing  with  the  growing  pauperism 
of  the  country,  that  frightful  gangrene  which  is  so  fast  eat- 
ing into  its  very  vitals !  How  utterly  unable  have  they 
shown  themselves  to  seize  on  one  principle  of  power, — 
one  moral  element,  —  through  which  the  plague  mia;ht  be 
staid !  By  dint  of  great  mental  exertion  they  have  con- 
trived to  learn  that  sixpence  of  assessed  money,  after  due 
deductions  for  the  expense  of  collection  and  superin- 
tendence, is  well-nigh  adequate  to  the  purchase  of  a  three- 
penny loaf,  and  that  rather  fewer  threepenny  loaves  ai-e 
demanded  by  the  hungry  pauperism  of  the  country  when 
they  are  eaten  in  workhouses  or  on  the  treadmill  than 
when  eaten  in  any  other  way.  And  this  is  just  all  they 
know.  Those  great  moral  means  of  adding  to  the  general 
health  of  the  body  politic,  through  which  it  might  be  made 
to  absorb  its  pauperism,  just  as  a  sound  natural  body 
absorbs  the  extra vasated  blood  and  inert  matter  of  a  severe 
contusion,  filling  with  life  and  feeling  what  had  become 
dead  and  insensate,  they  altogether  lack  the  ability  of 
comprehending.     There  is  no  guiding  moral  sense  williin 


468  STATE   CARPENTRY. 

them  sufficiently  enlightened  by  revelation  to  lead  their 
intellects  into  the  right  track ;  nnd  so  they  wander  blind 
in  a  perplexing  labyrinth  of  mean  and  inadequate  expe- 
dients. 

Never,  perhaps,  was  there  a  time  in  which  the  exigencies 
of  the  kingdom  so  enormously  overtopped  the  capabilities 
of  its  rulers.  Our  own  poor  Scotland,  in  her  periods  of 
greatest  difficulty  hitherto,  had  always  her  great  men,  — 
rulers  fitted  to  the  time,  and  adequate  to  th.e  work  of  lier 
deliverance.  She  lay  in  a  rude  state  when  Edward  I. 
attempted  her  subjugation  ;  and  it  might  have  seemed  a 
very  small  matter  whether  her  fierce  and  barbarous  peo- 
ple, our  early  ancestors,  should  have  lived  as  the  slaves  of 
England,  or  have  continued  to  enjoy  the  wild  liberty  of 
their  half  savage  condition.  But  there  were  great  though 
remote  consequences  involved  in  the  preservation  of  her 
independence.  She  had  purposes  to  serve  in  the  economy 
of  Providence  which  could  not  be  effi:?cted  by  an  enslaved 
province  ;  and  so,  in  her  time  of  extremest  peril,  God  called 
upon  two  great  men  to  fight  her  battles,  —  men  of  that 
very  type  and  mould  of  greatness  that  was  best  fitted  for 
her  deliverance  in  such  an  age,  —  iron-headed,  iron-handed 
champions,  whose  very  nature  it  was  that  they  could 
neither  yield  nor  despair.  They  had  a  long  and  a  sore 
battle  to  maintain  in  her  behalf;  and  one  of  the  two,  ere 
its  close,  fell  under  the  axe  of  the  headsman.  But  they 
were  thoroughly  fitted  for  the  appointed  work,  and  so  the 
appointed  work  was  thoroughly  done.  A  great  moral 
revolution  drew  on.  The  Man  of  Sin,  red  with  murder 
and  reeking  witli  impurity,  was  to  be  struck  down  in  Scot- 
land. The  people  that  had  been  preserved  from  the  domi- 
nation of  a  foreign  state  had  now  to  be  delivered  from  the 
thrall  of  a  degrading  superstition.  The  exigencies  of  the 
contest  demanded  quite  a  different  kind  of  greatness  from 
that  of  Wallace  and  the  Bruce;  and  so  John  Knox  was 
called  forth  to  fight  out  the  quarrel  in  behalf  of  the  truth; 
and  he  did  fight  and  gain  it.     The  contest  altered  in  its 


STATE    CARPENTRY.  469 

character;  it  had  to  be  maintained  for  the  rights  of  con- 
science, not  with  an  ecclesiastical  power,  but  with  the  civil 
magistrates.  The  dauntless  reformer  who  had  fought  in 
the  front  of  the  first  battle  had  passed  to  his  reward,  and 
he  seemed  to  have  left  no  man  behind  him  fitted  to  take 
his  place ;  but  there  was  one  Andrew  Melville,  a  poor, 
sickly,  orphan  boy,  attending  one  of  our  public  schools  at 
the  time ;  and  when  a  leader  was  most  needed,  —  needed 
so  much  that  the  cause  of  civil  and  religious  liberty  seemed 
lost  for  want  of  one,  —  Andrew  Melville  was  summoned  to 
take  the  lead.  And  so  the  battle  was  carried  on.  At  the 
second  Reformation,  the  same  want  was  felt  as  at  the  first ; 
but  it  was  necessary  that  the  cause  should  prevail,  and  so 
the  quiet  manse  of  Leuchars  furnished  in  Henderson  a 
leader  adequately  fitted  to  grapple  with  every  difiiculty  of 
the  time,  and  whose  extraordinary  commission  was  at 
once  recognized  by  his  country.  How  wofully  difi:erent 
the  state  of  matters  with  regard  to  our  governing  powers 
of  the  present  day!  One  is  continually  reminded  of  the 
complaint  of  the  kelpie  in  the  old  legend,  —  "The  hour  is 
come,  but  not  the  man."  Great  exigencies  have  found  lit- 
tle men  to  grapple  with  them,  and  in  a  style,  of  course,  that 
exhibits  the  character  of  the  men,  not  of  the  exigencies. 
The  stratagems  by  which  chambermaids  out-manceuvre 
one  another  in  the  graces  of  their  mistresses  have  been 
substituted  for  the  large  principles  by  which  the  guidance 
of  great  affairs  should  be  invariably  regulated ;  and  ques- 
tions that  aflfect  the  deepest  feelings,  and  involve  the 
vastest  consequences,  —  questions  that  can  have  rest  on 
only  the  basis  of  eternal  truth  and  justice,  —  have  been 
attempted  to  be  settled  through  the  exercise  of  exactly  the 
same  kind  of  arts  that  are  emjtloyed  by  jockeys  when  they 
sell  horses  at  fairs.  We  are  reminded  of  the  text  in  which 
God  represents  himself  as  taking  away,  for  the  sins  of  a 
people,  the  prudent  and  the  counsellor,  the  captain  and  the 
honorable,   the  judge   and   the  prophet;    and  appointing 

40 


470  STATE    CARPENTRY. 

"children  to  be  their  princes,  and  babes  to  have  rule  over 
them." 

The  Church  question  has  been  again  brought  before  the 
House  of  Lords,  and  with  just  the  usual  result.  Truly, 
the  part  taken  by  her  Majesty's  Government  in  tliese 
barren  discussions  would  be  eminently  ludicrous  were  it 
not  so  pitiable.  Has  the  reader  ever  seen  a  nervous 
gentleman  running  on  tiptoe  with  his  coat-tails  tucked  up 
under  his  arm,  magnanimously  resolved  on  clearing  at  a 
leap  some  formidable  five-feet  ditch,  but  stopping  abruptly 
short  at  the  edge,  at  once  panic-struck  and  angry,  and 
merely  gazing  across  for  hick  of  courage  to  do  more?  Has 
he  seen  him  repeat  and  re-repeat  the  vast  effort,  and  bring 
it  in  every  instance  to  the  same  grave  conclusion  ?  If  so, 
he  will  find  it  no  easy  matter  to  fall  on  a  fitter  emblem  of 
my  Lord  Aberdeen  and  his  coadjutors  than  the  nervous 
gentleman.  Ever  and  anon  his  lordship  tucks  up  his  coat- 
tails,  and,  taking  a  vast  run,  to  clear  at  a  bound  the  Church 
question,  gets  panic-struck  just  as  he  reaches  its  nearer 
edge,  and,  standing  stock  still,  grins  angrily  across.  His 
lordship,  and  his  lordship's  coadjutors,  have  not  yet  felt 
what  it  is  they  have  to  deal  with.  The  steam  of  their 
ministerial  Sunday  dinners  so  obscures  their  dining-room 
panes,  that  they  fiul  to  see  through  them  the  religious 
beliefs  of  the  country.  They  mark  on  the  dimmed  glass 
what  they  deem  im])alpable  shadows  stalking  past,  and  as 
impalpable  shadows  they  persist  in  treating  them.  Fools 
and  slow  of  heart,  who  have  failed  utterly  to  know  the 
day  of  their  visitation !  Do  they  not  even  yet  see  that  it 
is  not  with  a  handful  of  clergymen,  but  with  the  deeply- 
based  religion  of  Scotland,  that  they  have  to  do?  —  that 
they  have  come  in  rude  collision,  in  their  blindness,  with  a 
principle  which,  in  its  long  struggles,  has  been  often  over- 
borne and  grievously  o]i])ressed,  but  never  eventually  over- 
come, and  whose  battles,  once  begun,  never  terminate  till 
opposition  dies  ? 

The  Church,  however,  should  feel  grateful  to  the  Earl 


STATE    CARPENTRY.  471 

of  Aberdeen  for  the  declarations  of  his  short  speech.  They 
are  not  in  the  least  equivocal.  We  find  liis  lordship  com- 
plaining, in  his  introductory  sentence,  of  a  certain  existing 
desire  "to  extort  from  her  Majesty's  government,  at  the 
last  moment  before  the  meeting  of  the  General  Assembly, 
some  declaration  different  from  that  which  had  been 
ali-eady  deliberately  given."  And  this  desire,  as  her  Maj- 
esty's government  had  thoroughly  made  up  their  minds 
on  the  matter,  his  lordship  deemed,  of  course,  a  very 
annoying  sort  of  thing.  We  find  him  politely  adding, 
however,  that  "  he  had  no  objections  agaiis-  to  state  the 
nature  of  the  measure  which,  at  ^fitting  time,  her  Majesty's 
ministers  were  ready  to  bring  forward." 

"Again  to  state!"  These  are  plain  English  words, 
and  they  mean  that  what  his  lordship  on  this  occasion  had 
no  objection  to  state  was,  not  a  new  revelation  of  the 
mind  of  government,  but  a  revelation  which  had  been 
made  on  some  occasion  before.  They  unequivocally  in-e- 
mise  that  his  lordship's  statement  was  but  the  repetition 
of  a  former  statement;  and  obvious  it  is  that  that  former 
statement  cannot  be  held  to  mean  some  vague,  little  marked 
statement  of  some  uninfluential  member  of  the  Cabinet, 
but  just  none  other  than  the  statement  "deliberately 
given,"  with  express  reference  to  which  his  lordship  had 
resolved  not  to  be  entrapped  into  any  antagonist  declara- 
tion. Now,  where  shall  we  find  this  deliberate  statement? 
There  was  no  allusion  made  in  her  Majesty's  speech  to  our 
Scottish  Church  question.  Her  Majesty's  speech  was  a 
great  document,  filled  with  quite  higher  matters,  —  matters 
such  as  her  Majesty's  gratitude  for  the  Scottish  lath-arches 
and  Scottish  huzzas,  which  arose  in  honor  of  her  Majesty's 
last  year's  visit.  Virtually,  however,  the  Church  question 
had  a  queen's  speech  of  its  own ;  and  this  sort  of  queen's 
speech  —  a  public  document  embodying  the  deliberate 
declaration  of  her  Majesty's  governmeiit  —  their  stereo- 
typed scriptural  canon,  from  which  they  were  too  good 
Christians  to  be  driven,  —  bears  the  name  of  ^^ Sir  James 


472  STATE    CARPENTRY. 

Graham! s  Letter!''  There  exists  no  other  "deliberately 
given  declaration"  on  the  part  of  government,  to  which  a 
crown  minister  could  refer;  and  our  readers  would  do  well 
to  ponder  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen's  frankly  avowed  resolu- 
tion regarding  it. 

His  lordship's  restatement  of  its  conditions  is  in  a  some- 
what short-hand  style,  though  not  quite  unmarked  by  the 
adroitness  of  the  diplomatist.  He  condenses  the  rather 
tedious  sophistry  of  the  red-hair  argument  into  a  not 
implausible-looking  sentence,  which  intimates  liberty  of 
objection  on  the  part  of  the  people,  and  freedom  of  judg-' 
ment  in  deciding  on  the  grounds,  on  the  part  of  the 
Church ;  with  the  proviso,  however,  that  these  grounds 
should  be  in  every  case  faithfully  recorded.  The  people 
may  object,  if  they  please,  to  the  red  hair  of  the  presen- 
tee ;  and  then  the  Church, ^should  it  also  conscientiously 
dislike  red  hair,  and  so  deem  the  objection  a  solid  one,  has 
straightway  but  to  enter  on  its  books,  —  "  Unsuitable  pre- 
sentee^—  red-haired ;  people  and  loe  donH  like  red  hair  ;'''* 
and  then — why,  then,  the  red-haired  presentee  must  just 
be  content  to  despair  of  his  settlement,  unless,  indeed, 
there  be  some  hope  for  him  in  those  details  and  modi- 
fications of  the  measure  which  the  Earl  of  Aberdeen 
"abstained  purposely  from  entering  into,"  lest  "certain 
persons"  should  misinterpret  and  misrepresent  them.  The 
comment  of  Lord  Brougham  on  this  important  portion  of 
the  noble  earl's  speech  was  sufficiently  emphatic.  "If  his 
noble  friend's  announcement  was  understood  in  one  sense," 
he  said,  "it  Avould  be  an  utter  abandonment  of  the  claims 
of  the  civil  courts,  and  would  be  calculated  to  excite  much 
alarm;"  but  "taken  in  another  view,  it  was  quite  consist- 
ent with  sound  doctrine  and  civil  rights,  and  did  not  touch 
patronage."  He  might  well  have  added  that  the  Church 
was  quite  at  liberty  to  repose  as  confidently  as  she  could 
on  the  one  meaning;  and  lawyers,  such  as  his  lordship,  to 
seize  fast  hold  of  the  other. 

The  Earl  of  Aberdeen  stated  further,  in  just  accordance 


STATE    CARPENTRY.  473 

with  Lis  introductory  sentences,  that  "the  broad  and  gen- 
eral principles  on  which  the  government  were  ready  to 
act"  were  in  " conformity  with  the  declarations  that  had 
been  often  made  by  him;"  and  "that  it  remained  to  be 
seen  whether  the  General  Assembly,  after  what  he  had 
said,  would  think  it  necessary  to  secede,  or  to  wait  for  the 
purpose  of  ascertaining  what  her  Majesty's  government 
intended  to  propose  to  the  legislature."  There  must  surely 
be  some  confusion  of  idea  here.  Had  the  noble  earl  set 
out  by  stating  that  her  Majesty's  government  were  at 
length  determined  to  give  some  declaration  "different  from 
that  which  they  had  already  deliberately  given,"  —  had  he, 
instead  of  using  the  significant  ^'^  again  to  state^''  used  the 
equally  significant  ^^  state  for  the  first  time^'  —  had  he  said 
that  their  broad  and  general  j^rinciples  of  settlement  were 
•principles  not  in  conformity  with  their  previously  emitted 
declarations,  but,  on  the  contrary,  principles  which  they 
had  but  recently  taken  up,  —  principles  newly  adopted  by 
them,  not  the  old  ones,  —  then,  on  at  least  his  lordship's 
showing,  there  might  be  some  plausible  reason  for  delaying 
tlie  secession,  just  "for  the  purpose  of  ascertaining  what 
government  intended  proposing  to  the  legislature."  But 
seeing  that  the  principles  of  this  prospective  measure  are 
confessedly  tlie  old  principles,  where,  we  marvel,  lies  the 
reason  for  delay?  With  measures  on  the  old  principles 
the  Church  is  suflficiently  acquainted  already ;  she  has  seen 
and  does  not  like  them ;  they  are  disagreeable  sights  at 
best;  and  she  would  be  but  little  in  earnest  should  she 
lengtlien  out  delay  until  the  "fitting"  but  undeterminate 
time  when  her  Majesty's  government  may  think  proper  to 
add  one  more  to  their  number.  The  Earl  of  Aberdeen's 
concluding  remark  might  surely  have  been  spared,  and  yet 
it  is  possible  enough  to  find  an  apology  for  it  too.  "If 
^Aey"  [the  Evangelical  party]  "did  think  it  necessary  to 
secede  at  once,"  said  his  lordship,  "he  imagined  that  they 
would  be  scarcely  able  at  the  last  day  to  call  on  the  God 
of  truth  to  witness  that  they  had  been  driven  to  this  course 

40* 


474  STATE    CARPENTRY. 

by  the  persecution  of  the  legislature."  "  When  you  con- 
sider," says  Carlyle,  in  an  eulogiura  on  Cromwell,  —  "  wlien 
you  consider  that  Oliver  believed  in  a  God,  the  difference 
between  Oliver's  position  and  that  of  the  subsequent  gov- 
ernors of  this  country  becomes,  the  more  you  reflect  on  it, 
the  more  immeasurable."  His  lordship's  allusion  to  Deity 
here,  charitably  regarded,  and  taken  in  connection  with 
the  fact  that  his  lordship  is  one  of  those  governors,  may 
tell,  after  all,  to  his  lordsliip's  advantage. 

In  shipwreck  much  depends  on  knowing  the  exact  mo- 
ment in  which  the  wreck,  fast  beating, to  j^ieces  on  a  lee 
shore,  may  be  quitted  with  greatest  chance  of  escape;  and 
it  requires  both  resolution  and  presence  of  mind  to  enable 
the  seaman  promptly  to  avail  himself  of  it.  Much  de- 
pends, in  battle,  on  knowing  the  exact  moment  in  which 
the  charge  may  be  made  with  most  effect.  It  would  be 
well  that  on  Thursday  the  Church  should  not  linger,  no 
not  for  a  moment,  beyond  the  propitious  hour,  within  the 
wreck  of  the  Erastian  Establishment.  It  might  be  fatal 
to  convert  her  broad,  unanimous  question  of  principle  into 
a  contracted,  disputed  question  of  time,  —  a  question  re- 
specting an  hour  or  a  day,  —  a  question  whether  the  sepa- 
ration should  take  place  at  one  instant  or  at  another,  — 
whether  it  should  be  an  incident  of  the  eighteenth,  or  of 
the  nineteenth,  or  of  the  twentieth.  It  would  be  quite 
worthy  of  our  state  carpenters  to  exert  themselves  heart 
and  soul  in  striving  to  transpose  the  whole  matter  into  a 
question  of  hours  and  minutes,  —  to  hold  out  some  vague 
promise,  to  tuck  up  their  coat-tails  at  the  last  moment,  and 
cry  out:  " O,  wait  for  one  short  half-week,  till  we  have 
gatliered  way,  and  we  shall  then  overleap  the  separating 
ditch,  and  be  altogether  with  you."  But  it  would  be 
quite  unworthy  of  the  Church  to  suffer  the  state-wrights 
so  to  entrap  her. 


THE   DISRUPTION.  475 


THE    DISRUPTION 


The  fatal  die  has  been  cast.  On  Thursday  last  the 
religion  of  Scotland  was  disestablished,  and  a  principle 
recognized  in  its  stead  which  has  often  served  to  check 
and  modify  the  religious  influences,  but  which  in  no  age 
or  country  ever  yet  existed  as  a  religion.  Not  but  that 
it  has  performed  an  important  part,  even  in  Scotland.  It 
has  served  hitherto  to  control  the  Christianity  of  the 
Establishment  —  to  dilute  it  to  such  a  degree,  if  we  may 
so  speak,  as  to  render  it  bearable  to  statesmen  without 
God.  And  now  its  appointed  work  seems  over.  It  con- 
stituted at  best  but  the  drag-chain  and  the  hook  —  things 
that  have  no  vocation  apart  from  the  chariot.  But  the 
time  has  at  length  arrived  in  which  the  state  will  bear 
with  but  the  hook  and  the  drag,  apart  from  that  which 
they  checked  —  with  but  the  diluting  pabulum,  apart  from 
that  which  it  diluted;  and  so  a  mere  negation  of  Chris- 
tianity—  an  antagonist  force  to  the  religious  power  —  has 
been  vid;ually  recognized  as  exclusively  the  principle 
which  is  to  be  entrenched  in  the  parish  churches  of  Scot- 
land. The  day  that  witnessed  a  transaction  so  momentous 
can  be  a  day  of  no  slight  mark  in  modern  history.  It 
stands  between  two  distinct  states  of  things  —  a  signal  to 
Christendom.  It  holds  out  its  sign  to  these  latter  times, 
that  God  and  the  world  have  drawn  off  their  forces  to 
opposite  sides,  and  that  His  sore  and  great  battle  is  soon 
to  begin. 

The  future  can  alone  adequately  develop  the  more 
important  consequences  of  the  event.  At  present  we  shall 
merely  attempt  presenting  the  reader  with  a  few  brief  notes 
of  the  aspect  which  it  exhibited.  The  early  part  of  Thurs- 
day had  its  periods  of  fitful  cloud  and  sunshine,  and  the 
tall,  picturesque  tenements  of  the  Old  Town  now  lay  dim 
and  indistinct  in  shadow,  now  stood   prominently  out  in 


476  THE   DISRUPTION. 

the  light.  There  was  an  unusual  throng  and  bustle  in  the 
streets  at  a  comparatively  early  hour,  which  increased 
greatly  as  the  morning  wore  on  towards  noon.  We  marked, 
in  especial,  several  knots  of  Moderate  clergy  hurrying 
along  to  the  levee,  laughing  and  chatting  with  a  vivacity 
that  reminded  one  rather  of  the  French  than  of  the  Scotch 
character,  and  evidently  in  that  state  of  nervous  excite- 
ment Avhich,  in  a  certain  order  of  minds,  the  near  approach 
of  some  very  great  event,  indeterminate  and  unap2:)reciable 
in  its  bearings,  is  sure  always  to  occasion. 

As  the  morning  wore  on,  the  crowds  thickened  in  the 
streets,  and  the  military  took  their  places.  The  principles 
involved  in  the  anticipated  disruption  gave  to  many  a 
spectator  a  new  association  with  the  long  double  line  of 
dragoons  that  stretched  adown  the  High  Street,  far  as  the 
eye  could  reach,  from  the  venerable  Church  of  St.  Giles, 
famous  in  Scottish  story,  to  the  humbler  Tron.  The  light 
flashed  fitfully  on  their  long  swords  and  helmets,  and  the 
light  scarlet  of  their  uniforms  contrasted  strongly  with  the 
dingier  vestments  of  the  masses,  in  which  they  seemed  as 
if  more  than  half  ingulfed.  When  the  sun  glanced  'out, 
the  eye  caught  something  peculiarly  picturesque  in  the 
aspect  of  the  Calton  Hill,  with  its  imposing  masses  of 
precii)ices  overtopped  by  towers  and  monuments,  and  its 
intermingling  bushes  and  trees  now  green  with  the  soft, 
delicate  foliage  of  May.  Between  its  upper  and  under 
line  of  rock  a  dense  living  belt  of  human  beings  girdled 
it  round,  sweeping  gradually  downwards  from  shoulder  to 
base,  like  the  sash  of  his  order  on  the  breast  of  a  nobleman. 
The  Commissioner's  procession  passed,  with  sound  of 
trumpet  and  drum,  and  marked  by  rather  more  than  the 
usual  splendor.  There  was  much  bravery  and  glitter,  — 
satin  and  embroidery,  varnish  and  gold  lace,  —  no  lack,  in 
short,  of  that  cheap  and  vulgar  magnificence  which  can  be 
got  up  to  order  by  the  tailor  and  the  upholsterer  for  carni- 
vals and  Lord  Mayors'  days.  But  it  was  felt  by  the  assem- 
bled thousands,  as  the  pageant  swept  past,  that  the  real 


THE   DISRUPTION.  477 

spectacle  of  the  day  was  a  spectacle  of  a  diiferent  char- 
acter. 

The  morning  levee  had  been  marked  by  an  incident  of 
a  somewhat  extraordinary  nature,  and  which  history, 
though  in  these  days  little  disposed  to  mark  prodigies  and 
omens,  will  scarce  fail  to  record.  The  crowd  in  the  Cham- 
ber of  Presence  was  very  great,  and  there  was,  we  believe, 
a  considerable  degree  of  confusion  and  pressure  in  conse- 
quence. Suddenly  —  whether  brushed  by  some  passer  by, 
jostled  rudely  aside,  or  merely  affected  by  the  tremor  of 
the  floor  communicated  to  the  partitioning — a  large  por- 
trait of  William  the  Third,  that  had  held  its  place  in  Holy- 
rood  for  nearly  a  century  and  a  half,  dropped  heavily  from 
the  walls.  "  There,"  exclaimed  a  voice  from  the  crowd, 
"  there  goes  the  revolution  settlement." 

For  hours  before  the  meeting  of  Assembly  the  galleries 
of  St.  Andrew's  church,  with  the  space  behind,  railed  off 
for  the  accommodation  of  office-bearers  not  members,  were 
crowded  to  suffocation,  and  a  vast  assemblage  still  contin- 
ued to  besiege  the  doors.  The  galleries  from  below  had 
the  "  overbellying  "  appearance  in  front  described  by  Blair, 
and  seemed  as  if  piled  up  to  the  roof  behind.  Immedi- 
ately after  noon  the  Moderate  members  began  to  drop  in 
one  by  one,  and  to  take  their  places  on  the  moderator's  right, 
while  the  opposite  benches  remained  well-nigh  empty. 
What  seemed  most  fitted  to  catch  the  eye  of  a  stranger 
was  the  rosy  appearance  of  the  men,  and  their  rounded 
contour  of  face  and  feature.  Moderatism,  in  the  present 
day,  is  evidently  not  injuring  its  complexion  by  the  com- 
position of  "  Histories  of  Scotland  "  like  that  of  Robertson, 
or  by  prosecuting  such  "Inquiries  into  the  Human  Mind" 
as  those  instituted  by  Reid.  We  were  reminded,  in  glanc- 
over  the  benches,  of  a  bed  of  full-blown  piony-roses  glis- 
tening after  a  shower  ;  and,  could  one  have  but  substituted 
among  them  the  monk's  frock  for  the  modern  dress-coat, 
and  given  to  each  crown  the  shaven  tonsure,  not  only 
would  they  have  passed  admirably  for  a  conclave  of  monks 


478  THE   DISRUPTION. 

met  to  determine  some  weighty  point  of  abbey-income  or 
right  of  forestry,  but  for  a  conclave  of  one  determinate 
age,  —  tliat  easily  circumstanced  middle  age  in  which,  the 
days  of  vigil  and  maceration  being  over,  and  the  disturb- 
ing doctrines  of  the  Reformation  not  yet  aroused  from  out 
of  their  long  sleep,  the  Churchman  had  little  else  to  do 
than  just  amuse  himself  with  concerns  of  tlie  chase  and 
the  cellar,  the  larder  and  the  dormitory.  The  benches  on 
the  left  began  slowly  to  fill,  and  on  the  entrance  of  every 
more  distinguished  member  a  burst  of  recognition  and 
welcome  shook  the  gallery.  Their  antagonists  had  been 
all  permitted  to  take  their  j3laces  in  ominous  silence.  The 
music  of  the  pageant  was  heard  outside;  the  moderator^ 
entered,  attired  in  his  gown ;  and  ere  the  appearance 
of  the  Lord  High  Commissioner,  preceded  by  his  pages 
and  mace-bearer,  and  attended  by  the  Lord  Provost,  the 
Lord  Advocate,  and  the  Solicitor-General,  the  Evangelical 
benches  had  filled  as  densely  as  those  of  their  opponents  ; 
and  the  cross  benches,  appropriated,  in  perilous  times  like 
the  present,  to  a  middle  party  careful  always  to  pitch  their 
principles  below  the  suffering  point,  were  also  fully  occu- 
pied. Never  before  was  there  seen  so  crowded  a  General 
Assembly.  The  number  of  members  had  been  increased 
beyond  all  precedent  by  the  double  returns ;  and  almost 
every  member  was  in  his  place.  The  moderator  opened  the 
proceedings  by  a  deeply  impressive  prayer;  but  though  the 
silence  within  was  complete,  a  Babel  of  tumultuary  sounds 
outside,  and  at  the  closed  doors,  expressive  of  the  intense 
anxiety  of  the  excluded  multitude,  had  the  effect  of  ren- 
dering him  scarcely  audible  in  the  more  distant  parts  of  the 
building.  There  stood  beside  the  chair,  though  on  opposite 
sides,  the  meet  representatives  of  the  belligerent  parties. 
On  the  right  we  marked  Principal  M'Farlan,  of  Glasgow, 
—  the  man,  in  these  altered  times,  when  missions  are  not 
held  disreputable,  and  even  Moderates  profess  to  believe 

1  The  late  Rev.  Dr.  Welsh,  Professor  of  Church  History  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh. 


THE   DISnUPTION.  479 

that  the  gospel  may  be  communicated  to  savages  without 
signally  injuring  their  morals,  who  could  recommend  his 
students  to  organize  themselves  into  political  clubs,  but 
dissuade  them  from  forming  missionary  societies.  On  the 
left  stood  Thomas  Chalmers,  the  mnn  through  whose  in- 
domitable energy  and  Christian  zeal  tv»'o  hundred  churches 
were  added  to  the  Establishment  in  little  more  than  ten 
years.  Science,  like  religion,  had  its  representatives  on 
the  moderator's  right  and  left.  On  the  one  side  we  saw 
Moderate  science  personified  in  Dr.  Anderson,  of  New- 
burgh, —  a  dabbler  in  geology,  who  found  a  fish  in  the  Old 
Red  Sandstone,  and  described  it  as  a  beetle.  We  saw 
science  not  3Ioclerate^  on  the  other  side,  represented  by  Sir 
David  Brewster. 

The  moderator  rose  and  addressed  the  House  in  a  few 
impressive  sentences.  There  had  been  an  infringement,  he 
said,  on  the  constitution  of  the  Church,  —  an  infringement 
so  great  that  they  could  not  constitute  its  General  Assem- 
bly without  a  violation  of  the' union  between  Church  and 
State,  as  now  authoritatively  defined  and  declared.  He 
was  therefore  compelled,  he  added,  to  i)rotest  against  pro- 
ceeding farther;  and,  unfolding  a  document  which  he  held 
in  his  hand,  he  read,  in  a  slow  and  emphatic  manner,  the 
protest  of  the  Church.  For  the  first  few  seconds,  the 
extreme  anxiety  to  hear  defeated  its  object;  the  universal 
hush,  hush,  occasioned  considerably  more  noise  than  it 
allayed.  But  the  momentary  confusion  was  succeeded  by 
the  most  unbroken  silence;  and  the  reader  went  on  till 
the  impressive  close  of  the  document,  when  he  flung  it 
down  on  the  table  of  the  house,  and  solemnly  departed. 
He  was  followed,  at  a  pace's  distance,  by  Dr.  Chalmers ; 
Dr.  Gordon  and  Dr.  Patrick  M'Farlan  immediately  suc- 
ceeded ;  and  then  the  numerous  sitters  on  the  thickly  occu- 
pied benches  behind  filed  after  them,  in  a  long,  unbroken 
line,  which  for  several  minutes  together  continued  to 
thread  the  passage  to  the  eastern  door,  till  at  length  only 
a  blank  space  remained.      As  the  well-known  faces  and 


480  THE   DISRUPTION. 

forms  of  some  of  the  ablest  and  most  eminent  men  that 
ever  adorned  the  Church  of  Scotland  glided  along  in  the 
current,  to  disappear  from  the  courts  of  the  state  institu- 
tion forever,  there  rose  a  cheer  from  the  galleries,  and  an 
impatient  cry  of  "Out,  out,"  from,  the  ministers  and  elders 
not  members  of  Assembly,  now  engaged  in  sallying  forth, 
to  join  with  them,  from  the  railed  area  behind.  The  cheers 
subsided,  choked  in  not  a  few  instances  in  tears.  The 
occasion  was  by  far  too  solemn  for  the  commoner  manifes- 
tations of  either  censure  or  approval :  it  excited  feelings 
that  lay  too  deep  for  expression.  There  was  a  marked 
peculiarity  in  the  appearance  of  their  opponents,  —  a  blank, 
restless,  pivot-like  turning  of  head  from  the  fast  emptying 
benches  to  one  another's  faces ;  but  they  uttered  no  word, 
not  even  in  whispers.  At  length,  when  the  last  of  the 
withdrawing  pai'ty  had  disappeared,  there  ran  from  bench 
to  bench  a  hurried,  broken  wliispering:  "How  many?" 
"How  many  ?  "  —  "A  hundred  and  fifty?"—  "N"o."  — "Yes." 
"  Four  hundred  ?  "  —  "  No  ;  "  and  then  for  a  moment  all 
was  still  again.  The  scene  that  followed  we  deemed  one 
of  the  most  striking  of  the  day.  The  empty,  vacated 
benches  stretched  away  from  the  moderator's  seat  in  the 
centre  of  the  building  to  the  distant  wall.  There  suddenly 
glided  into  the  front  rows  a  small  party  of  men  whom  no 
one  knew,  —  obscure,  mediocre,  blighted-looking  men,  that, 
contrasted  with  the  well-known  forms  of  our  Chalmerses 
and  Gordons,  Candlishes  and  Cunninghams,  M'Farlans, 
Brewsters,  and  Dunlops,  reminded  one  of  the  thin  and 
blasted  corn-ears  of  Pharaoh's  vision,  and,  like  them,  too, 
seemed  typical  of  a  time  of  famine  and  destitution.  Who 
are  these?  was  the  general  query;  but  no  one  seemed  to 
know.  At  length  the  significant  whisper  ran  along  the 
house,  "The  Forty."  There  was  a  grin  of  mingled  con- 
tempt and  compassion  visible  on  many  a  broad  Moderate 
face,  and  a  too  audible  titter  shook  the  gallery.  There 
seemed  a  degree  of  incongruity  in  the  sight,  that  partook 
highly  of  the  ludicrous.     For  our  own  part,  we  were  so 


THE   DISRUPTIOX.  481 

carried  away  by  a  vagrant  association,  and  so  missed  Ali 
Baba,  the  oil-kettle,  and  the  forty  jars,  as  to  forget  for  a 
time  that  at  the  doors  of  these  unfortunate  men  lies  the 
ruin  of  the  Scottish  Establishment.  The  aspect  of  the 
Assembly  sank,  when  it  had  in  some  degree  recovered 
itself,  into  that  expression  of  tame  and  flat  commonplace 
which  it  must  be  henceforth  content  to  bear,  until  roused, 
happily,  into  short-lived  activity  by  the  sharp  paroxysms 
of  approaching  destruction. 

A  spectacle  equally  impressive  with  that  exhibited  by 
the  ministers  and  elders  of  the  Free  Church,  as  they 
winded  in  long  procession  to  their  place  of  meeting,  there 
to  constitute  their  independent  Assembly,  Edinburgh  has 
certainly  not  witnessed  since  those  times  of  the  Cove- 
nant when  Johnston  of  Warriston  unrolled  the  solemn 
parchment  in  the  churchyard  of  the  Greyfriars,  and  the 
assembled  thousands,  from  the  peer  to  the  peasant,  adhib- 
ited their  names.  The  procession,  with  Dr.  Chalmers,  and 
the  moderator  in  his  robes  and  cap  of  office,  at  its  head, 
extended,  three  in  depth,  for  a  full  quarter  of  a  mile.  The 
Lord  Provost  of  the  city  rode  on  before.  Rather  more 
than  four  hundred  were  ministers  of  the  Chm'ch ;  all  the 
others  were  elders.  Be  it  remembered,  that  the  number  of 
ministers  ejected  from  their  charges  at  the  Restoration,  and 
who  maintained  the  struggle  in  behalf  of  Presbytery  dur- 
ing the  long  persecution  of  twenty-eight  years,  amounted 
in  all  to  but  three  hui^dred  and  seventy-six;  but  then,  as 
now,  the  religious  principles  which  they  maintained  were 
those  of  the  country.  They  were  principles  that  had  laid 
fast  hold  of  the  national  mind,  and  the  fires  of  persecution 
served  only  to  render  their  impress  ineradicable.  We  trust 
in  a  very  few  weeks  to  see  the  four  hundred  increased  to 
five.  Is  it  not  strange  how  utterly  the  great  lessons  of  his- 
tory have  failed  to  impress  the  mean  and  wretched  rulers 
of  our  country  in  this  the  day  of  their  visitation  ?  Bishop 
Fairfoul,  when  urging  on  the  act  that  desolated  the  par- 
ishes   of  Scotlan<l,  assured   Commissioner  Middleton  that 

41 


482  THE    CLOSE. 

there  would  not  be  ten  in  his  diocese  who  would  not  ju'e- 
fer  sacrificing  their  princijDles  to  losing  their  stipends  ;  and 
Commissioner  Middleton  believed  him.  The  time  of  ejec- 
tion came.  On  the  last  Sabbath  of  October,  1662,  tlie 
Presbyterian  ministers  preached  and  bade  farewell  to  their 
congregations;  and  on  that  day,  as  we  find  it  stated  by 
Burnet,  two  hundred  churches  were  at  once  shut  up,  and 
abandoned  equally  by  pastors  and  by  people.  "And  never," 
says  Kirkton,  "  was  there  such  a  sad  Sabbath  in  Scotland." 
Great  was  the  astonishment,  and  even  consternation,  of  the 
government.  "They  had  committed,"  says  Hetherington, 
"the  grievous  error  into  which  unprincipled  men  are  so 
apt  to  fall,  of  concluding  what  the  Presbyterian  ministers 
would  do  by  what  they  themselves  would  have  done  in 
similar  circumstances,  and  saw  their  error  when  it  was  too 
late  to  repair  it."  The  struggle  went  on  for  more  than  half 
an  age,  and  terminated  only  when  a  dynasty  had  changed, 
and  a  discrowned  king  wandered  in  unhappiness,  and 
begged,  an  exile  in  a  foreign  land. 


THE    CLOSE. 

The  Free  and  Residuary  Assemblies  have  closed  their 
sittings;  the  over-strung  mind  of  the  Scottish  public 
demands  its  interval  of  rest,  and  thrilling  excitement  and 
incessant  labor  give  place,  for  a  brief  period,  to  compara- 
tive quiescence  and  repose.  For  our  own  part,  for  at  least 
a  few  months  to  come,  we  shall  see  the  sun  rise  less  fre- 
quently than  we  have  done  of  late,  and  miss  oftener  the 
earliest  chirp  of  the  birds  that  welcome  the  first  gray  of 
morning  from  among  the  old  trees  of  Heriot's  and.  the 
Meadows.  The  chapter  added  to  the  History  of  the 
Church  of  Scotland  has  just  been  completed.  The  con- 
cluding page  presents  the  usual  blank  interval;  and  we  feel 
inclined  to  lay  down  the  volume  for  a  space,  and  poiKier 
over  its  contents. 


THE   CLOSE.  483 

Almost  all  our  readers  must  be  acquainted  with  Hetlier- 
ingtou's  admirable  History  of  the  Church  of  Scotland, — 
our  only  existing  ecclesiastical  history  that  brings  down  its 
eventful  narrative  to  times  so  near  the  present  as  to  record 
in  its  latter  pages  the  events  which  but  a  year  or  two  ago 
were  exhibited  as  matters  of  news  in  the  public  prints. 
The  unfinished  appearance  of  the  close  of  this  volume  must 
have  been  remarked  by  all  its  readers.  It  reminded  us 
always  of  an  interesting  story,  with  a  handful  of  the  con- 
cluding leaves  torn  away.  It  was  a  drama  mutilated  in  the 
terminal  scenes  of  the  filth  act.  The  current  of  the  narra- 
tive flowed  onwards,  broadening  and  deepening  in  its  inter- 
est to  one  definite  point  of  time,  and  then,  like  the  current 
which  Mirza  saw  in  his  vision,  disappeared  abrwptly  in  the 
thick  mists  of  futurity,  just  when  the  signs  of  some  great 
change  had  increased  most  in  number,  and  become  most 
palpable  in  their  indications.  The  historian  may  now  com- 
plete his  work  by  uniting  to  his  concluding  chain  of  occur- 
rences the  catastrophe  in  which  they  have  terminated. 
The  old  state  of  things  is  over,  and  a  new  state  has  begun. 

There  are  points  of  prominent  interest  involved  in  tlie 
event,  which  must  be  apparent  to  all.  It  is  now  exactly 
two  hundred  and  eighty-three  years  since  the  Gencrjd 
Assembly  of  the  Church  of  Scotland  held  its  first  meeting, 
and  laid  down  in  its  First  Book  of  Discipline,  and  its  first 
Confession  of  Faith,  the  truths  in  which  it  believed,  and 
the  principles  by  which  its  government  was  to  be  regu- 
lated. These  embodied  in  all  their  breadth  the  Redeem- 
er's rights  of  prerogative  as  sole  Head  and  King  of  his 
Church,  and,  with  these,  all  those  duties  and  privileges  of 
the  Church's  members  which  his  rights  necessarily  involve 
and  originate.  They  brought  out  everywhere  the  grand 
master-idea,  that  wherever  God,  as  King,  promulgates  a 
law,  there  must  there  spring  up  on  the  part  of  man,  as  his 
subject,  not  merely  a  corresponding  duty,  but  also  a  right ; 
a.  duty  in  relation  to  his  adorable  King,  a  right  in  rela- 
tion to  his  fellows ;    the  duty  of  obedience    with  respect 


484  THE    CLOSE. 

to  the  oue,  the  right  of  being  at  perfect  freedom  to  obey 
with  regard  to  the  others.  The  fogs  of  a  dreary  siipersti- 
tiou  had  enveloped  for  ages  the  throne  of  Deity;  God  had 
been  long  an  unknown  and  unrecognized  Sovereign  ;  and 
it  was  necessary,  therefore,  that  his  rights  should  be 
broadly  asserted.  An  iron  despotism  had  pressed  upon 
the  people.  It  was  imperative,  therefore,  that  their  corre- 
sponding rights  —  their  rights,  which  originate  in  his 
rights  —  should  be  broadly  asserted  also;  and  on  this 
master-idea  —  the  fundamental  idea  of  all  revelation  — 
the  Church  of  Scotland,  in  accordance  with  the  Divine 
pattern,  built  up  her  Confession  of  Faith  and  her  Book  of 
Discipline.  The  points  most  prominently  developed  in 
her  first  General  Assembly  must  be  familiar,  through  these 
well-known  works,  to  all  our  readers.  Her  doctrine  of  the 
Divine  Headship,  her  doctrine  of  spiritual  independence, 
her  scheme  of  ecclesiastical  discipline,  and  her  broad 
anti-patronage  principle,  rose  up  in  high  relief.  The 
relation,  too,  in  which  she  stood  to  all  the  other  Reformed 
Churches  of  the  world  was  one  of  peculiar  mark.  Her 
great  leader  had  been,  only  a  few  years  before,  one  of  the 
chaplains  of  the  King  of  England.  He  had  been  the  chosen 
minister,  at  an  early  period,  first  of  a  congregation  at 
Frankfort,  then  of  a  congregation  at  Geneva.  He  had  held 
communion  with  Evangelism  wherever  he  had  found  it ; 
and  the  Church  to  which  he  belonged,  and  which  he  led, 
had,  like  himself,  her  bonds  of  Chiistian  communion  and 
fellowship  extended  all  over  Europe.  "Wherever  there 
existed  a  Church  of  the  Reformation,  there  the  Church 
of  Scotland  recognized  a  sister  and  ally. 

Now,  let  the  reader  but  compare  her  last  General  As- 
sembly, in  which  Evangelism  maintained  its  place,  —  the 
Assembly  of  1842,  —  with  her  first  General  Assembly, — 
that  of  15G0;  and  we  are  sure  he  will  scarce  fail  to  be 
struck  by  the  resemblance.  There  was  not  a  single  prin- 
ciple prominently  maintained  in  the  one  that  was  not 
determinedly  asserted  in  the  other.     It  would  seem  as  if, 


THE   CLOSE.  485 

in  completing  her  cycle  of  nearly  three  centuries,  she  had 
taken  a  few  steps  in  advance  over  the  identical  ground 
irom  which  she  had  at  first  started.  Her  last  Assembly  was 
just  her  first  Assembly  come  back  again.  The  doctrine  of 
the  Divine  Headship  asserted  its  prominent  place,  as  at 
first,  in  due  connection  with  the  old  master-idea  that  the 
rights  of  the  Divine  King  originate,  of  necessity,  inalien- 
able rights  of  his  subjects;  and  hence  her  struggle  with  the 
invading  civil  power,  to  preserve  intact  lier  spiritual  inde- 
pendence. She  asserted  her  discipline ;  and,  in  the  due 
exercise  of  the  keys,  ejected  and  shut  out  of  her  com- 
munion the  thief  and  the  swindler,  holding  fast  the  door 
against  the  beleaguering  force  that  would  have  so  fain 
thrust  them  in  again.  She  received  friendly  letters  and 
deputations,  as  of  old,  from  her  sisters  of  the  Reformation. 
She  repealed  the  infamous  act  of  1799,  that  had  placed  her 
in  a  state  of  non-communion  with  the  whole  Christian 
world.  And,  passing  upwards  from  the  mere  non-intrusion 
principle  of  her  Second  Book  of  Discipline  to  the  free- 
election  principle  of  her  First  Book,  she  solemnly  avowed, 
with  her  great  founders,  that  "  it  appertaineth  to  the 
people,  and  to  every  several  congregation,  to  elect  their 
minister."  The  last  step  completed  the  cycle,  —  it  was  all 
that  was  v/anting  to  complete  it;  and  the  Church  of  Scot- 
land stood  once  more  on  the  identical  ground  from  which 
three  centuries  ago  her  career  of  usefulness  had  begun. 
How  exquisitely  true  to  Goldsmith's  fine  simile !  The 
beleaguered  hare,  when  pursued  by  "  hounds  and  horses,"  is 
described  as  "panting  to  the  place  from  which  at  first  she 
flew."  Her  course  may  have  included  many  a  distant 
track,  and  involved  many  a  tortuous  winding;  but  she 
dies  in  her  form  at  last  Is  it  not  a  significant  circum- 
stance, that  the  Church  disestablished  by  a  British  Parlia- 
ment in  1843  should  be  in  every  respect,  down  to  even  the 
minutest  point,  the  identical  Church  established  by  a  Scot- 
tish Parliament  in  1567?  Restored  in  all  her  lineaments, 
she  quits,  just  as  she  entered  it,  the  asylum  furnished  her  by 

41* 


486  THE    CLOSE. 

the  state,  for  the  state  refuses  to  grant  her  harborage  any 
longer  on  the  old  terms;  and,  shaking  off  the  dust  of  her 
feet  in  testimony  against  it,  she  again  sets  out  on  her  pil- 
grimage with  the  same  hostile  world  around  her,  and  the 
same  unchanging  God  above,  —  that  world  in  which  her 
Master  suffered,  and  which  he  will  one  day  thoroughly 
overcome,  —  and  that  God  for  the  integrity  of  whose  laws 
she  has  contended,  and  who  has  promised  that  in  her  hour 
of  persecution  he  will  be  with  her  in  the  fire. 

Curiously  significant  as  this  circumstance  may  seem,  it 
has  found  in  the  Disruption  a  kind  of  counterpart,  if  we 
may  so  speak,  which  we  deem  at  least  equally  curious  and 
significant.  Has  the  reader  ever  marked  a  watch-spring 
snapping  in  the  centre,  and  the  two  fragments,  which  in 
their  entire  state  formed  but  one  circle,  coiling  into  two 
independent  circles,  that  presented  to  each  other  no  point 
of  reunion?  The  Disruption  no  sooner  takes  place  than 
each,  through  a  principle  of  elasticity  in  itself,  instantane- 
ous in  its  operation,  is  bent  away  in  a  direction  diametri- 
cally opposed  to  that  of  its  neighbor.  And  such,  on  an 
immensely  extended  scale,  has  been  the  effects  of  the 
Disruption  in  the  Church.  Its  two  parties,  that  for  so 
many  years  formed,  ostensibly  at  least,  but  one  body,  have 
no  sooner  drawn  apart,  than,  moved  each  by  its  own 
internal  principle,  they  have  coiled  up  into  antagonistic 
bodies.  The  residuary  Assembly  of  1843  has  been  even 
more  remarkable  than  the  General  Assembly  of  1842.  It 
required  a  series  of  years  to  bring  up  Evangelism  to  the 
identical  ground  occupied  by  our  first  reformers  ;  whereas, 
to  throw  Moderatism  back  to  the  ground  which  it  occupied 
in  its  palmiest  days  —  to  throw  it  back  a  whole  half-cen- 
tury —  was  but  the  work  of  a  moment.  To  use  the  figure 
of  Cowper,  "  the  bow,  long  forced  into  a  curve,"  and  then 
suddenly  released,  has  "flown  to  its  first  position  with  a 
spring."  Is  it  not  strange  how  very  obviously,  in  these 
latter  days,  almost  every  form  and  modification  of  i-eligion 
among  us   is    returning  to  its  original  type?     There  is  a 


THE    CLOSE.  487 

resurrection  everywhere  of  the  identical  bodies  in  which 
their  deeds  of  good  or  of  evil  were  wrought  of  old.  Laudism 
stands  erect  in  England,  with  all  its  rags  of  Rome  about 
it,  like  a  thief  surrounded  in  court  by  the  property  which 
he  has  stolen.  Rome  herself  has  revived  among  us,  and 
receives,  in  her  true  character,  the  patronage  and  support 
of  the  state.  The  Evangelism  of  our  first  reformers  comes 
forward,  disestablished  and  denounced,  to  begin  among  the 
people  anew  her  peculiar  work  of  reformation.  And  now, 
here  is  Moderatism  shutting  itself  up  from  the  communion 
of  all  Christendom,  —  recognizing  the  secular  power  as 
possessed  of  sole  authority  to  bind  and  to  loose,  —  throw- 
ing up  at  once  the  reins  of  discipline,  —  brim-full  as  ever 
of  cruel  pity  for  its  erring  ministers,  —  coarsely  regardless 
as  ever  of  those  sacred  rights  of  the  people  which  originate 
in  tlieir  duties,  —  true,  in  short,  in  every  respect  to  its 
original  type,  —  the  identical  Moderatism  of  the  days  of 
Robertson  and  of  Hill.  Graves  are  opening  in  these  latter 
times,  and  churches  are  coming  forth,  restored  to  their 
original  state  and  condition.  What  does  so  wonderful  a 
resurrection  portend?  Is  there  no  hour  of  judgment  at 
hand,  in  which  there  is  a  throne  to  be  set,  and  books  to  be 
opened  ? 

How  very  brief  a  period  has  elapsed  since  the  govern- 
ment of  this  country  could  have  settled  at  small  expense 
the  Church  question !  and  how  entirely  has  it  passed  be- 
yond the  reach  of  human  adjustment  now !  In  disestab- 
lishing the  religion  of  Scotland,  there  has  been  a  breach 
made  in  the  very  foundations  of  national  security,  which 
can  never  be  adequately  filled  up.  The  yawning  chasm  is 
crowded  with  phantoms  of  terror.  There  are  the  forms  of 
an  infidel  Erastianism  in  front,  and  surplices,  crosses,  and 
treble  crowns  in  the  rear;  while  deep  from  the  darkness 
comes  a  voice,  as  of  many  waters,  the  roar  of  infuriated 
multitudes  broken  loose  from  religion,  and  thirsting  for 
blood.  May  God  avert  the  omen  !  That  man  must  have 
studied  to  but  little  purpose  the  events  of  the  last  twelve 


488  UNION   AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES. 

days  vvlio  does  not  see  that  there  is  a  Guiding  Hand  order- 
ing and  regulating  alL  The  pawns  in  this  great  game  do 
not  move  of  themselves ;  the  adorable  Being  who  has 
"foreordained  whatsoever  conieth  to  pass"  is  working  out 
his  own  designs  in  his  own  w^ay.  The  usurpations  of  civil 
magistrates,  the  treachery  of  unfaithful  ministers,  the 
errors  and  mistakes  of  blind-hearted  and  incompetent 
statesmen,  all  tend  to  accomplish  his  decrees;  and  it  would 
be  well,  surely,  since  in  one  way  or  other  all  must  forward 
his  purposes,  to  be  made  to  forward  them  rather  as  his 
fellow-workers  than  as  his  blind,  insensate  tools.  Let  the 
disestablished  Church  take  courage ;  there  is  a  time  of 
severe  conflict  before  her ;  but  the  result  of  the  battle  is 
certain. 


UNION   AND   ITS   PRINCIPLES. 

Some  of  our  readers  must  have  witnessed  the  singularly 
imposing  scene  at  Canonmills,  on  the  evening  of  Sabbath 
the  28th  May,  when  Edinburgh  so  poured  out  its  inhab- 
itants to  attend  the  ministrations  of  the  Free  Church,  that 
the  vast  hall,  containing  with  ease  an  assemblage  of  three 
thousand  persons,  could  receive  scarce  a  tithe  of  the  whole; 
and  when,  after  the  building  had  been  filled  with  its  one 
huge  congregation  to  overflowing,  and  many  thousands 
had  returned  disappointed  to  their  homes,  such  vast  multi- 
tudes still  continued  to  linger  outside,  that  they  were 
formed  into  five  congregations  more.  Perhaps  on  no  for- 
mer occasion  was  Edinburgh  the  scene  of  a  spectacle  so 
extraordinary.  The  unbroken  stream  of  human  beings 
that  continued  to  pour  downwards  from  the  city,  long 
after  a  counter-current,  like  an  eddy  tide  creeping  along 
the  shore,  had  begun  to  ascend,  giving  evidence  that  hun- 
dreds had  been  already  disappointed ;  the  vast  masses 
that  blackened  the  area  around  the  building,  and  choked 
up  every  avenue  of  access ;  the  crowds  that  besieged  the 


UNION   AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES.  489 

doors;  the  mustering  iuto  distinct  groups,  as  congrega- 
tion after  congregation  was  formed  in  the  open  air,  under 
a  dark  and  lowering  sky ;  the  A'oice  of  psahiis  arising 
from  so  many  contiguous  points,  imited  and  yet  distinct, 
as  if  each  of  the  six  assemWages  had  been  but  an  mdi- 
vidual  w^orshipper ;  and  then,  when  the  clouds  broke  and 
the  rain  descended,  the  perseverance  manifested  by  each 
of  the  groups  in  holding  its  place  in  undiminished  bulk 
around  the  j^reacher,  like  our  Scottish  congregations  of 
old,  faithful  in  times  of  trial,  till  at  length  the  showers 
ceased,  and  the  quiet  of  a  mild  though  sombrous  twilight 
settled  down  over  the  whole,  —  the  spectacle,  in  short, 
with  all  its  various  accompaniments,  formed  one  of  those 
pregnant  scenes  which  grow  upon  the  mind,  affecting  the 
imagination  more  jDowerfully  when  called  up  in  memory  at 
an  after  period  than  even  when  under  the  eye,  and  that, 
from  this  quality  of  increasing  instead  of  diminishing  in 
bulk  as  months  and  years  intervene,  are  once  Avitnessed 
never  to  be  forgotten. 

ImjDosing  and  unprecedented,  however,  as  the  spectacle 
must  have  seemed,  the  present  age  bids  fair  to  witness 
many  such.  They  seem  destined  to  form  one  of  the  char- 
acteristic marks  of  these  latter  times,  in  which  religious 
questions  are  so  fast  assuming  their  old  place  and  im[)or- 
tance.  The  spectacle  described  took  place,  as  we  have 
said,  on  the  28th  May.  Only  four  days  passed,  and  the 
capital  of  the  sister  kingdom  became,  in  turn,  the  scene  of 
a  spectacle  which,  if  less  picturesque  in  its  details,  was 
almost  identical  in  its  character.  Exeter  Hall  —  a  build- 
ing which  accommodates  with  comparative  comfort,  in  its 
one  huge  apartment,  fully  five  thousand  persons  —  was 
crowded  by  at  least  six  thousand  ;  and  out  of  tlie  surplus 
multitudes  that  could  not  gain  access,  two  other  large 
meetings  were  formed.  What  object  could  have  drawn 
together  such  immense  crowds, — an  object,  says  one  of 
the  speakers  who  addi-essed  the  larger  meeting,  in  an 
exi)lanatory  letter  to  the  editor  of  the  Patriot,  altogether 


490  UNION   AND   ITS   PRINCIPLES. 

new  to  the  religions  public?  They  assembled  to  lay  the 
foundations  of  an  expansive  scheme  of  Christian  union 
among  all  the  various  Evangelistic  Churches  of  the  empire ; 
and  there  met  on  the  same  platform,  for  the  purpose  of 
cordial  cooperation  in  this  good  cause,  Baptists  and 
Moravians,  Presbyterians  and  Episcopalians,  Wesleyans, 
Independents,  and  Lutherans.  Every  Evangelistic  Church 
sent  its  representatives;  and  the  absence  of  all  representa- 
tion on  the  part  of  the  others  served  but  to  indicate  their 
character.  The  Papist  was  not  there,  nor  the  Puseyite, 
nor  the  High  Churchman,  nor  the  Socinian,  nor  the  Uni- 
tarian, nor  the  Residuary.  The  two  extremes  were  want- 
ing,—  Erastianism  and  semi-infidelity  were  absent  on  the 
one  hand,  and  superstition  and  priestly  domination  on  the 
other. 

It  cannot,  we  think,  be  doubted  that,  in  the  religious 
world,  the  current  has  at  length  fairly  set  in  in  favor  of 
union  and  cooperation.  The  Evangelistic  Churches  are  at 
length  yielding  to  the  emergencies  of  time.  During  a  long 
period  of  external  quiet  they  existed  as  a  congeries  of 
independent  states,  rather  more  at  peace,  we  are  afraid, 
with  the  world  without  than  with  one  another.  Each  had 
its  own  disputed  rights  and  by-laws,  —  its  own  municipal 
and  burghal  privileges,  — for  which  it  stood  up  quite  often 
enough  against  its  fellows;  and  they  forgot  at  times,  in 
the  heat  of  controversy,  the  great  federal  union  by  which 
they  had  been  bound  together.  They  differed  as  near 
neighbors  sometimes  differ  when  there  is  no  common 
enemy  to  annoy  them.  But  the  exigencies  of  the  time 
demand  a  wiser  and  more  expansive  course  of  policy. 
Persia  is  on  the  march,  and  so  Athens  and  Lacedemon 
must  resign  their  private  quarrels,  and  arm,  not  in  front  of 
one  another,  but  side  by  side.  Hitherto  the  confederated 
states  have  held  but  their  own  local  parliaments ;  we  hail 
in  the  Exeter  Hall  meeting  on  Thursday  the  rudiments  of 
a  general  congress.  The  armies  of  the  rising  apostasy 
are  mustering  on  every  side  of  us.      A  decrepit  Erastian- 


UNION   AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES.  491 

isni  holds  the  temporalities  of  the  Scottish  Estriblishmeiit, 
not  so  much  on  its  own  behalf  as  on  behalf  of  Puseyite 
Episcopacy,  in  the  way  that  a  guardian  holds  property  for 
a  minor;  of  the  temporalities  of  the  English  Establish- 
ment, Rome,  under  a  false  name,  has  already  entered  on 
possession.  The  invading  power  has  seized,  either  in  its 
own  proper  character  or  by  proxy,  on  the  strongholds  and 
fortalices  of  the  country ;  and  it  is  high  time,  therefore, 
and  more  than  time,  that  Protestantism  should  be  callinir 
her  war  councils,  and  laying  down  her  lines  of  defence. 

The  bond  of  union  in  such  councils  —  \X\q,  constitution^ 
if  we  may  so  speak,  of  such  general  congresses  —  does  not 
threaten  to  involve,  if  a  spirit  of  wisdom  and  charity  be 
present,  any  very  formidable  difficulty.  It  was  moved  at 
the  great  Exeter  meeting,  by  the  Hon.  and  Rev.  Baptist 
Noel,  that  the  meeting  had  assembled  on  the  grounds  fur- 
nished by  truths  common  to  all  the  Evangelistic  Churches, 
especially  on  that  first  principle  of  the  Reformation,  "the 
sufficiency  and  authority  of  the  holy  Scriptures  as  the  sole 
rule  of  Christian  faith,  and  the  right  of  private  judgment," 
—  that  "it  recognized  as  the  bond  of  union  the  great  doc- 
trines unanimously  received  by  all  Evangelical  Christians, 
such  as  the  doctrine  of  the  holy  Trinity,  of  the  infinite 
love  of  the  Father,  of  the  perfect  atonement  of  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  of  the  sanctifying  grace  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  of 
justification  by  faith  alone,  and  of  the  necessity  of  regen- 
eration to  a  Christian  life  and  character;"  and,  further,  th  .t 
the  meeting  held  "the  agreement  in  these  fundamental 
truths  amons:  Evano-elical  Christians  to  be  so  unanimous  in 
substance  and  spirit  as  to  form  a  firm  foundation  for  con- 
cord and  union."  To  somewdiat  similar  effisct  were  the 
remarks  of  Dr.  Candlish  in  our  Free  Assembly,  on  the 
bicentenary  commemoration  of  the  Assembly  of  Westmin- 
ster,—  a  meeting  well  suited,  we  trust,  to  forward  and 
mature  the  scheme  of  general  cooperation.  Though  the 
committee  appointed  in  reference  to  the  commemoration 
contemplated,  he  said,  a  meeting  of  churches  holding  the 


492  UNION   AND    ITS   PRINCIPLES. 

Westminster  standardi,  they  by  no  means  wished  it  to  be 
understood  that  they  included  in  their  design  no  other 
churches.  Were  it  of  a  character  so  restricted,  some  of 
their  best  friends  would  be  excluded,  —  such  a  body,  for 
instance,  as  the  Wesleyan  Methodists.  Their  scheme  em- 
braced, he  repeated,  the  whole  Evangelistic  Churches  of 
Christendom. 

As  forming  the  true  pale  of  these  churches,  we  recog- 
nize just  two  barriers.  There  are  two  walls,  if  we  may  so 
speak,  which  shut  in  the  Evangelistic  bodies  on  opposite 
sides  from  all  those  churches  with  which  they  must  not  and 
cannot  associate.  The  one,  where  Christianity  abuts  on  the 
antagonist  superstition,  is  the  wall  of  baptismal  regenera- 
tion ;  the  other,  where  Christianity  abuts  on  the  antagonist 
infidelity,  is  the  wall  of  Christ's  mere  humanity.  These  are 
impassable  barriers.  We  cannot  scale  the  rampart  above ; 
we  cannot  ford  the  moat  below  ;  we  cannot  join  hands  with 
the  parties  that  lie  entrenched  behind.  Does  the  Socinian 
and  the  Unitarian  long  for  union  on  the  one  hand?  —  then 
let  them  unite  with  their  proper  congener  the  Deist.  Does 
the  High  Churchman  and  the  Puseyite  long  for  union  on 
the  other?  —  then  let  them  unite  with  their  proper  con- 
gener the  Roman  Catholic.  Between  these  and  the  Evan- 
gelistic Churches  there  can  be  no  union.  From  the  one 
wall  there  stretches  away  a  dolorous  region  of  ice  and  dark- 
ness, under  the  polar  night  and  polar  winter  of  Popery,  in 
which  no  2:)lant  of  grace  can  thrive,  or  where,  if  the  true 
seed  falls,  carried  as  if  by  the  winds,  it  produces,  amid  the 
chills  and  the  gloom,  merely  a  stinted  and  colorless  verdure, 
that  speaks  of  but  the  lack  of  the  cheering  light  and  the 
absence  of  the  genial  warmth.  From  the  other  wall  there 
spreads  an  arid  and  burning  waste  of  fluctuating  sand, — 
the  howling  desert  of  infidelity,  —  watered  by  no  refresh- 
ing rain  or  by  no  living  spring,  and  where,  if  the  seed  falls, 
it  lies  inoperative  and  dead  forever.  Of  the  temperate 
and  well-watered  region  between,  it  is  one's  j^roper  part,  at 
a  time  like  the  present,  to  look  rather  to  the  spiritual  pro- 


UNION    AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES.  493 

cluce  than  to  the  phenomena,  if  we  may  so  speak,  of  its 
various  climates.  All  the  churches  of  this  zone,  in  which 
conversion  from  sin  to  God  takes  place  as  the  legitimate 
end  and  object  of  their  ministrations,  are  to  be  regarded  as 
sister  churches.  What,  for  instance,  constitutes  the  chief 
bond  of  union  between  tlie  Free  Church  and  that  body  to 
which  Dr.  Candlish  so  directly  alluded,  —  the  Wesleyan 
Methodists?  The  fact  mainly  that,  notwithstanding  cer- 
tain doctrinal  differences,  our  common  Father  recognizes 
both  bodies,  by  sending  down  upon  them  his  Spirit,  and 
thus  appropriating  in  both,  through  conversion,  a  seed  to 
Himself  God  owns  Wesleyanism,  and  therefore  we  own 
it.  He  owns,  after  a  similar  manner,  the  Presbyterianisni 
of  Scotland,  and  therefore  Wesleyanism  owns  it  in  turn. 
And  this  we  hold  to  be  a  simple  and  perfectly  intelligible 
bond  of  union.  It  is  a  bond  which  furnishes  us  with  the 
principle  on  which  Wesleyanism,  and  the  other  Evangelis- 
tic bodies  similarly  circumstanced,  may  well  join  with  us 
in  commemorating  the  bicentenary  of  our  Westminster 
Assembly.  Our  standards  are  not  theirs  in  every  respect; 
but  if  they  recognize  them  in  the  main  as  great  boons  to 
the  world,  —  works  through  which,  by  the  blessing  of  God, 
many  conversions  have  been  eifected  and  the  beliefs  in 
great  truths  kept  alive,  —  if  they  look  upon  thc^m,  in  con- 
nection with  the  Presbyterianisni  of  Christendom,  in  the 
same  light  in  which  we  look  upon  the  labors  of  the  earlier 
Methodists  in  connection  with  its  Methodism,  —  then  most 
certainly  may  they  join  us  with  all  cordiality  in  our  bicen- 
tenary commemoration. 

The  reader  will  perhaps  forgive  us  should  we  illustrate 
our  views  on  this  subject  by  a  simple  story.  We  remem- 
ber telling  it  once  before,  in  a  rather  widely-circulated 
periodical ;  but  our  object  on  that  occasion  was  somewhat 
different  from  the  present,  and  we  addressed  a  very  differ- 
ent circle  of  readers.  We  may  perhn])S  be  permitted  to 
urge,  by  way  of  apology,  that  if  we  somewhat  exceed  the 
conventional  limits  of  the  article-writer  of  the  present  day, 

42 


49J:  UNION    AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES. 

we  keep  far  within  those  of  the  article-writer  of  the  days 
of  Queen  Anne,  when  Whiggism  was  at  once  elaborate  and 
happy  in  the  Freeholder^  and  Toryism  in  the  Examiner 
and  the  Craftsman. 

Need  we  point  out  the  rationale  of  the  story,  or  the 
moral  which  it  carries?  Willie  had  quitted  the  north 
country  a  respectable  Presbyterian,  but  it  was  not  until 
after  meeting  in  the  sonth  with  some  pious  Baptists  that  he 
had  become  vitally  religious.  The  peculiarities  of  Baptist 
belief  had  no  connection  whatever  with  his  conversion ; 
higher  and  more  generally  entertained  doctrines  had  been 
rendered  efficient  to  tlitit  end ;  but,  as  is  exceedingly  com- 
mon in  such  cases,  he  had  closed  with  the  entire  theologi- 
cal code  of  the  men  who  had  been  instrumental  in  the 
work ;  and  so,  to  the  place  which  he  had  left  an  uncon- 
verted Presbyterian,  he  returned  a  converted  Baptist. 
Certain  it  was,  however,  —  though  until  after  his  death 
his  townsmen  failed  to  apprehend  it,  —  that  Willie  was 
better  fitted  for  Christian  union  with  the  truly  religious 
portion  of  them  in  the  later  than  in  the  earlier  stages  of  his 
career.  Willie  the  Presbyterian  was  beyond  comparison 
less  their  Christian  brother  than  Willie  the  Baptist,  maugre 
their  diversity  of  opinion  on  one  important  point.  And  in 
course  of  time  they  all  lived  to  see  it.  We  may  add  that, 
of  all  the  many  arguments  promulgated  in  favor  of  tolera- 
tion and  Christian  union  in  this  northern  town,  there  were 
none  that  told  with  better  effect  than  the  arguments  fur- 
nished by  the  life  and  death  of  Willie  Watson,  the  "poor 
lost  lad." 

It  is  now  fifty  j^ears  since  Willie  Watson  returned,  after 
an  absence  of  nearly  a  quarter  of  a  century,  to  his  native 
place,  a  seaport  town  in  the  north  of  Scotland.  He  had 
been  employed  as  a  ladies'  shoemaker  in  some  of  the  dis- 
tricts of  the  south.  No  one  at  home  had  heard  of  Willie  in 
the  interval;  and  there  was  little  known  regarding  him  on 
his  return,  except  that,  when  he  had  quitted  town  many 
years  before,  he  had  been   a  neat-handed,  excellent  work- 


UXION    AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES.  405 

mnn,  nnd  wliat  the  elderly  people  called  a  quiet,  decent  lad. 
And  he  was  now,  though  somewhat  in  the  wane  of  life,  a 
more  thorough  master  of  his  trade  than  before.  He  was 
quiet  and  unobtrusive,  too,  as  ever,  and  a  great  reader  of 
serious  books.  And  so  the  better  sort  of  the  people  were 
beginning  to  draw  to  Willie  by  a  kind  of  natural  sympathy. 
Some  of  thera  had  learned  to  saunter  into  his  workshop  in 
the  long  evenings,  and  some  had  grown  bold  enough  to 
engage  him  in  serious  conversation  when  they  met  with  him 
in  his  solitary  walks;  when  out  came  the  astounding  fact, 
—  and,  important  as  it  may  seem,  the  simple-minded 
mechanic  had  taken  no  pains  to  conceal  it,  —  that  during 
his  residence  in  the  south  country  he  had  left  the  Kirk 
and  gone  over  to  the  Baptists.  There  was  a  sudden  revul- 
sion of  feeling  towards  him,  and  all  the-people  of  the  town 
began  to  speak  of  Willie  Watson  as  "  a  poor  lost  lad." 

The  "poor  lost  lad,"  however,  was  unquestionably  a  very 
excellent  workman  ;  and  as  he  made  neater  shoes  than 
anybody  else,  the  ladies  of  the  place  could  see  no  great 
harm  in  wearing  them.  He  was  singularly  industrious,  too, 
and  indulged  in  no  expense,  except  when  he  now  and 
then  bought  a  good  book,  or  a  few  flower-seeds  for  his 
garden.  He  was,  withal,  a  single  mai5,  with  only  an  elderly 
sister,  who  lived  with  him,  and  himself,  to  provide  for; 
and  what  between  the  regularity  of  his  gains  on  the  one 
hand,  and  the  moderation  of  his  desires  on  the  other, 
Willie,  for  a  person  in  his  sphere  of  life,  was  in  easy  cir- 
cumstances. It  was  found  that  all  the  children  in  the 
neighborhood  had  taken  a  wonderful  flmcy  to  his  shop. 
He  was  fond  of  telling  them  good  little  stories  out  of 
the  Bible,  and  of  explaining  to  them  the  prints  which  he 
had  pasted  on  the  w^alls.  Above  all,  he  was  anxiously 
bent  on  teaching  them  to  read.  Some  of  their  parents 
were  poor,  and  some  of  them  were  careless;  and  he  saw 
that,  unless  they  le:irned  their  letters  from  him,  there  was 
little  chance  of  their  ever  learning  them  at  all.  Willie,  in 
a  small  way,  and  to  a  very  small  congregation,  was  a  kind 
of  missionary ;  and,  what  between  his  stories,  and  his  pic- 


4yb  UNION   AND    ITS   PRINCIPLES. 

tares,  and  his  flowers,  and  his  apples,  his  labors  wei-e  won- 
derfully successful.  Never  yet  was  school  or  church  half 
so  delightful  to  the  little  men  and  w^omen  of  the  place  as 
the  shop  of  Willie  Watson,  "  the  poor  lost  lad." 

Years  of  scarcity  came  on  ;  taxes  were  high,  and  crops 
not  abundant;  and  the  soldiery  abroad,  whom  the  country 
had  employed  to  fight  in  the  great  revolutionary  war,  had 
got  an  appetite  at  their  Avork,  and  were  consuming  a  great 
deal  of  meat  and  corn.  The  price  of  the  boll  rose  tremen- 
dously ;  and  many  of  the  townspeople,  who  were  working 
for  very  little,  were  not  in  every  case  secure  of  their  little 
when  the  work  was  done.  Willie's  small  congregation 
began  to  find  that  the  times  were  exceedingly  bad.  There 
were  no  more  morning  pieces  among  them,  and  the  por- 
ridge was  always  less  than  enough.  It  was  observed, 
however,  that,  in  the  midst  of  their  distresses,  Willie  got 
in  a  large  stock  of  meal,  and  that  his  sister  had  begun  to 
bake  as  if  she  were  making  ready  for  a  wedding.  Tlie 
children  were  wonderfully  interested  in  the  work,  and 
watched  it  to  the  end,  —  when  lo  !  to  their  great  and 
joyous  surprise,  Willie  began  and  divided  the  whole  baking 
amongst  them.  Every  member  of  his  congregation  got  a 
cake.  There  w^ere  some  who  had  little  brotliers  and  sisters 
at  home  who  got  two ;  and  from  that  day  forward,  till 
times  got  better,  none  of  Willie's  young  people  lacked 
their  morning  piece.  The  neighbors  marvelled  at  Willie. 
To  be  sure,  much  of  his  goodness  was  a  kind  of  natu- 
ral goodness ;  but  certain  it  was,  that,  independently  of 
what  it  did,  it  took  an  inexplicable  delight  in  the  Bible 
and  in  religious  meditation  ;  and  all  agreed  that  there  was 
something  strangely  puzzling  in  the  character  of  "the  poor 
lost  lad." 

We  have  alluded  to  Willie's  garden.  Never  was  there 
a  little  bit  of  ground  better  occupied.  It  looked  like  a 
piece  of  rich  needlework.  He  had  got  wonderful  flowers, 
too,  —  flesh-colored  carnations  streaked  with  red,  and  roses 
of  a  rich,  golden  yellow.  Even  the  commoner  varieties  — 
auriculas  and  anemones,  and  the  party-colored  polyanthus 


UNION    AND    ITS    PRINCIPLES.  497 

—  grew  better  with  Willie  than  with  anybody  else.  A 
Dutchman  might  have  envied  him  his  tulips,  as  they  stood, 
row  above  rovv^,  on  their  elevated  beds,  like  so  many  soldiers 
on  a  redoubt ;  and  there  was  one  mild,  dropping  season  in 
which  two  of  these  beautiful  flowers,  each  perfect  in  its 
kind,  and  of  different  colors,  too,  sprung  apparently  from 
the  same  stem.  The  neighbors  talked  of  them  as  they 
would  have  talked  of  the  Siamese  twins  ;  but  Willie,  though 
it  lessened  the  wonder,  was  at  pains  to  show  them  that  the 
flowers  sprung  from  diflerent  roots,  and  that  w^hat  seemed 
their  common  stem  was  in  reality  but  a  green,  hollow 
sheath,  formed  by  one  of  the  leaves.  Proud  as  Willie  was 
of  his  flowers,  —  and,  with  all  his  humility,  he  could  not 
help  being  somewhat  proud  of  them,  —  he  was  yet  consci- 
entiously determined  to  have  no  miracle  among  them, 
nnless,  indeed,  the  miracle  should  chance  to  be  a  true  one. 
It  was  no  fault  of  Willie's  that  all  his  neighbors  had  not 
as  fine  gardens  as  himself.  He  gave  them  slips  of  his  best 
flowers  — flesh-colored  carnation,  yellow  rose,  and  all.  He 
grafled  their  trees  for  them,  too,  and  taught  them  the  exact 
time  for  raising  their  tulip-roots,  and  the  best  mode  of  pre- 
serving them.  Nay,  more  than  all  this,  he  devoted  whole 
hours  at  times  to  give  the  finishing  touches  to  their  par- 
terres and  borders,  just  in  the  way  a  drawing-master  lays 
in  the  last  shadings  and  imparts  the  finer  touches  to  the 
landscapes  of  a  favorite  pupil.  All  seemed  impressed  with 
tlie  unselfish  kindliness  of  his  disposition  ;  and  all  agreed 
that  there  could  not  be  a  warmer-hearted  man  or  a  more 
obliging  neighbor  tlian  Willie  Watson,  "the  poor  lost  lad." 
Evei-ything  earthly  must  have  its  last  day.  Willie  was 
rather  an  elderly  than  an  old  man,  and  the  childlike  sim- 
plicity of  his  tastes  and  habits  made  people  think  of  him 
as  younger  than  he  really  was.  But  his  constitution,  never 
a  strong  one,  was  gradually  failing ;  he  lost  strength  and 
appetite ;  and  at  length  there  came  a  morning  on  which  he 
could  no  longer  open  his  shop.  He  continued  to  creep  out 
at   noon,  however,  for  a   few  days   after,  to   enjoy  himself 

42* 


498  UNION   AND    ITS   PRINCIPLES. 

among  his  flowers,  with  only  the  Bible  for  his  companion ; 
but  in  a  few  days  more  he  had  declined  so  much  lower, 
that  the  effort  proved  too  much  for  him,  and  he  took  to 
his  bed.  The  neighbors  came  flocking  in.  All  had  begun 
to  take  an  interest  in  poor  Willie ;  and  now  they  had 
learned  that  he  was  dying,  and  the  feeling  had  deepened 
immensely  with  the  intelligence.  They  found  him  lying 
in  his  neat  little  room,  with  a  table,  bearing  the  one  beloved 
volume,  drawn  in  beside  his  bed.  He  was  the  same  quiet, 
placid  creature  he  had  ever  been, — grateful  for  the  slight- 
est kindness,  and  with  a  heart  full  of  love  for  all, —  full  to 
overflowing.  He  said  nothing  of  the  Kirk,  and  nothing 
of  the  Baptists ;  but  earnestly  did  he  urge  on  his  visitors 
the  one  master  truth  of  revelation.  O,  to  be  secure  of 
an  interest  in  Christ!  There  was  nothing  else,  he  assured 
them,  that  would  stand  them  in  the  least  stead,  Avhen,  like 
him,  they  came  to  die.  As  for  himself,  he  had  not  a  single 
anxiety.  God,  for  Christ's  sake,  had  been  kind  to  him 
during  all  the  long  time  he  had  been  in  the  world  ;  and 
He  was  now  kindly  calling  him  out  of  it.  Whatever  He 
did  to  him  was  good,  and  for  his  good ;  and  why,  then, 
should  he  be  anxious  or  afraid  ?  The  hearts  of  Willie's 
visitors  were  touched,  and  they  could  no  longer  speak  or 
think  of  him  as  "  the  poor  lost  lad." 

A  few  short  weeks  went  by,  and  Willie  had  gone  the 
Avay  of  all  flesh.  There  was  silence  in  his  shop ;  and  his 
flowers  opened  their  breasts  to  the  sun,  and  bent  their 
heads  to  the  bee  and  tlie  butterfly,  with  no  one  to  take 
note  of  their  beauty,  or  to  sympathize  in  the  delight  of 
tlie  little  winged  creatures  that  seemed  so  happy  among 
them.  There  was  many  a  wistful  eye  cast  at  the  closed 
door  and  melancholy  shutters,  by  the  members  of  Willie's 
congregation;  and  they  could  all  point  out  his  grave. 


APPENDIX 


The  Tree  Church  of  Scotland  originated  in  a  struggle  for  spiritual 
independence.  Its  constituent  members  refused  to  recognize  the  right  of 
civil  courts  to  supervise  its  spiritual  sentences.  The  Court  of  Session  in 
Scotland  decided  that,  as  the  church  was  supported  by  the  state,  it  was 
under  the  jurisdiction  of  the  state,  in  spiritual  as  well  as  temporal  con- 
cerns. The  courts  of  appeal  in  England  confirmed  this  decision,  after 
long  and  patient  deliberation.  The  advocates  of  spiritual  independence 
found  themselves,  therefore,  shut  up  to  one  of  two  alternatives  :  either  to 
bow  to  the  decision  and  yield  to  the  authority  of  the  state,  or  to  sever 
themselves  from  the  Established  Church  at  the  sacrifice  of  their  stipends 
and  parsonages  and  houses  of  worship.  They  did  not  hesitate ;  and  their 
exodus  in  a  body  from  the  General  Assembly,  and  the  organization  of  a 
new  church,  filled  all  Scotland  with  wonder  or  admiration. 

They  exulted  in  having  attained  spiritual  freedom,  though  at  great  cost, 
and  supposed  that,  by  the  sacrifice  of  support  from  the  state,  they  were 
released  from  its  jurisdiction.  But  their  freedom  was  subjected  to  new 
perils.  The  Court  of  Session  again  laid  claim  to  the  right  of  supervision 
over  the  spiritual  discipline  of  the  Free  Church.  The  following  statement 
of  the  Cardross  case,  which  has  given  rise  to  a  new  struggle  between  the 
Free  Church  and  the  civil  courts,  is  taken  from  the  Appendix  to  the  Eng- 
lish edition  of  this  volume :  — 

"  Mr.  M'Millan,  while  Free  Church  minister  of  Cardross,  was,  under 


500  APPENDIX. 

two  separate  counts,  charged  by  the  Presbytery  of  Dumbarton,  of  which 
he  was  a  member,  with  drunkenness,  or  with  being  '  the  worse  of  drink ; ' 
and  also,  under  a  third  count,  of  immodest  conduct  towards  a  married 
female,  with  certain  aggravations.  The  Presbytery,  after  hearing  evi- 
dence, found,  by  a  majority,  the  first  count  in  the  libel  not  proven ;  the 
second  count,  by  a  majority,  proven,  with  the  exception  of  indistinctness 
of  articulation ;  and  with  respect  to  the  third  count,  they  set  aside  the 
aggravating  circumstances,  and  by  a  majority  found  a  part  of  it  proven. 

"  Against  this  judgment  Mr.  M'Millan  appealed  to  the  Synod,  the  next 
highest  court,  who,  after  hearing  parties,  unanimously  discharged  the 
first  count  of  the  libel,  and  by  a  majority  found  the  second  and  third 
counts  not  proven. 

"  An  appeal  against  this  decision  was  taken  by  certain  members  of  the 
Synod,  and  the  matter  accordingly  came  before  the  General  Assembly, 
the  supreme  court  of  the  church.  After  the  case  had  been  debated  at 
great  length  on  both  sides,  the  General  Assembly,  on  the  motion  of 
Dr.  Candlish,  seconded  by  George  Dalziel,  Esq.,  W.  S.,  by  a  large  major- 
ity delivered  the  following  judgment .  '  That  on  the  first  count  of  the 
minor  proposition  of  the  libel,  the  Assembly  allow  the  judgment  of  the 
Synod  to  stand  ;  on  the  second  count  of  the  minor  proposition  of  the  libel, 
sustain  the  dissent  and  complaint  and  appeal,  reverse  the  judgment  of  the 
Synod,  and  affirm  the  judgment  of  the  Presbytery  finding  the  charge  in 
said  count  proven  ;  and  on  the  third  count  of  the  minor  proposition  of 
libel,  sustain  the  dissent  and  complaint,  reverse  the  judgment  of  the  Synod, 
and  find  the  whole  of  the  charge  in  said  count,  as  framed  originally  in  the 
libel,  proven.' 

"  In  consequence  of  this  decision,  Mr.  M'Millan  was  suspended  sine  die 
from  the  office  of  the  holy  ministry,  and  the  pastoral  tie  between  him  and 
the  congregation  of  Cardross  was  dissolved. 

"  Mr.  M'Millan  hereupon  raised  an  action  in  the  civil  court  to  prohibit 


APPENDIX.  501 

the  General  Assembly  from  carrying  out  their  sentence  ;  and  on  an  inter- 
dict being  served  upon  that  body,  he  was  cited  to  appear  at  their  bar  to 
answer  for  his  conduct.  Having  appeared  at  the  time  appointed,  and  ad- 
mitted that  he  had  raised  the  action  in  question,  the  Assembly  at  once 
unanimously  passed  sentence  of  deposition  upon  him.  Mr.  M'Millan  now 
raised  other  two  actions  in  the  civil  court  against  the  General  Assembly, 
and  individual  members  of  it,  for  a  reduction  of  their  sentences,  and  claim- 
ing damages." 

In  these  suits  the  Free  Church  at  first  refused  to  appear  as  a  party,  put- 
ting in  the  pleas  that  in  spiritual  matters  it  is  independent  of  civil  jurisdic- 
tion ;  and  that  by  the  Constitution  of  the  Church  it  is  made  a  duty  to 
depose  from  the  ministry,  by  a  summary  process,  any  clergyman  who 
applies  to  the  civil  court  for  redress  against  its  discipline. 

These  pleas  were  overruled  by  Lord  Jerviswoode,  of  the  Court  of  Ses- 
sion, and  the  Free  Church  was  enjoined  to  produce  its  Constitution  in 
court,  that  the  court  might  decide  whether  in  this  act  of  discipline  it  had 
conformed  to  the  Constitution.  In  announcing  this  decision,  the  learned 
judge  virtually  denied  the  distinctions  between  things  spiritual  and  things 
civil,  and  between  the  church  as  under  the  authority  of  Christ  and  an 
association  of  individuals  formed  by  mutual  consent.  He  distinctly 
claimed  that  the  Free  Church  in  its  dealings  with  its  members  is  amena- 
ble to  the  civil  courts,  like  any  voluntary  association ;  and  that  even  in 
cases  of  suspension  or  deposition  for  spiritual  offences.  The  committee 
of  the  Free  Church,  though  denying  utterly  the  authority  of  the  court, 
thought  it  expedient  to  yield  to  the  decision,  so  far  at  least  as  to  submit 
the  Constitution  of  the  Church  to  its  inspection. 

Here  the  matter  rests  for  the  present ;  but,  as  may  readily  be  seen,  the 
gravest  issues  are  involved.  If  the  court  overrules  the  sentences  of  the 
church,  it  will  virtually  restore  Mr.  M'Millan  to  the  ministry  from  which 
he  has  been  deposed,  and  reinstate  him  in  the  pastoral  connection  which 


502  APPENDIX. 

has  been  dissolved.  In  short,  it  will  nullify  the  spiritual  power  of  the 
church,  and  make  it  completely  subordinate  to  the  state.  All  other 
churches  will  be  shorn  of  independence  by  the  same  decision,  and  the 
most  odious  form  of  state  absolutism  will  be  asserted.  A  struggle  must  en- 
sue in  Scotland  which  will  convulse  its  social  order,  and  an-ay  the  spirit- 
ual forces  in  solid  phalanx  against  the  civil  power ;  for  the  spiritual  freedom 
won  by  the  Reformation  will  not  be  surrendered  by  those  who  have  been 
taught  by  their  own  history,  no  less  than  by  the  Bible,  to  give  unto  Cas- 
sar  the  things  that  are  Ceesafs,  and  unto  God  the  things  that  are  God's. 

The  previous  paragraphs  were  written  more  than  two  years  ago.  Since 
that  time  the  Court  of  Session,  with  a  full  bench,  has  dismissed  the 
appeal  of  Mr.  M'Millan,  on  certain  technical  grounds,  but  without  renounc- 
ing the  jurisdiction  claimed  by  Judge  Jerviswoode.  Mr.  M'Millan,  with 
a  pertinacity  worthy  of  a  better  cause,  has  commenced  suits  against  the 
Moderator  of  the  Assembly  which  deposed  him,  and  many  of  its  prominent 
members ;  but  none  of  them  have  come  to  trial,  and  the  spiritual  authority 
of  the  Free  Church  is,  therefore,  still  held  in  suspense. 


ffei     €«b- 


f  ahiaHe  ®orIi 


is, 

PUBLISHED     BY 

aOULD     AND     LINCOLN, 

59    WASHINGTON     STREET,    BOSTON. 

o<j>»:;o<> ■ 

CHRISTIAN'S  DAILY  TREASURY:  a  Religious  Exercise  for  every  day 
in  the  year.    By  Rev.  H.  Temple.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

WREATH  AROUND   THE  CROSS;   or,  Scripture  Truths  Illustrated.    By 
Rev.  A.  Morton  Brown,  D.  D.    16mo,  cloth.    60  cents. 

SCHOOL   OF  CHRIST;  or,  Christianity  Viewed  in  its  Leading  Aspects.    By 
Rev  a.  R.  L.  Foote.    16nio,  cloth.    50  cents. 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE,  Social  and  Individual.    By  Peter  Bayne,  M.  A 
12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 

THE  PURITANS;   or,  The  Church,  Court,  and  Parliament  of  England.    By 
Rev.  Samuel  Hopkins.    In  3  vols.,  octavo.    Vol.  I.,  cloth,  ready.     $2.50. 

MODERN  A  THEISM;  under  its  various  forms.  By  James  Buchanan,  D.D. 
12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 

THE  MISSION  OF  THE  COMFORTER ;  with  copious  Notes.    By  Julius 
Charles  Hare.    American  edition;  Notes  translated.    12mo,  cloth.   $1.25. 

GOD  REVEALED   IN  NATURE  AND  IN  CHRIST.    By  Rev.  James 
B.  Walker.    12mo,  cloth    $1.00. 

PHILOSOPHY  OF  THE  PLAN  OF  SALVATION.     New,  improved, 
and  enlarged  edition.    12mo,  cloth.     75  cents. 

YAHVEH  CHRIST;    or,  The  Memorial  Name.    By  Alex'r  MacWhorter. 
Introductory  Letter  by  Nath'l  W.  Taylor,  D.D,    12mo,  cloth.    60  cents. 

SALVATION  BY  CHRIST:   Discourses  on  some  of  the  most  important 
Doctrines  of  the  Gospel.    By  Francis  Wayland,  D  D.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

THE  SUFFERING  SAVIOUR;  or,  Meditations  on  the  Last  Days  of  Christ 
By  Frederick  W.  Krummacher,  D.  D.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 

THE  GREAT  DAY  OF  ATONEMENT;   or,  Meditations  and  Prayers  on 
the  Sufferings  and  Death  of  our  Lord.    75  cents. 

EXTENT   OF  THE  ATONEMENT  IN  ITS  RELATION    TO    GOD 
AND  THE  UNIVERSE.    By  Thomas  W.  Jenkyn,  D.D.  12rao,  cloth.   $1.00. 

THE  IMITATION  OF  CHRIST.     By  Thomas  a  Kempis.     With  a  Life 
of  k  Kempis,  by  Dr  C.  Ullmann.    12mo,  cloth.    85  cents. 

THE  HARVEST  AND    THE  REAPERS.     Home  Work  for  all,  and  how 
to  do  it.    By  Rev.  Hauvey  Newcomb.    16mo,  cloth.    63  cents. 


(Bonh  mxir  l^iiTtoIii's  ^uirlicatrcits. 


(RELIGIOUS.) 


LIMITS   OF  EEL  row  US    THOUGHT  EXAMINED.      By  Henry   L. 
Mansel,  B  D.    Notes  translated  for  American  ed.    12mo,  cL    $.100. 

THE   CRUCIBLE;  or,  Tests  of  a  Regenerate  State.    By  Rev.  J.  A.  Goodhue. 
Introduction  by  Dr.  Kirk.    12mo,  cloth.     $1.00. 

LEADERS    OF    THE    REFORMATION.      Luther  -  Calvin  -  Latimer - 
Knox.    By  John  Tulloch,  D.  D     12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

BARON  STOW.     Christiai^  Brotherhood.    16mo,  cloth.    50 cents. 
First  Things;  or,  the  Development  of  Church  Life. 


16mo,  cloth.    60  cents. 

JOHN  ANGELL   JAMES.  Church  Members  Guide.     Cloth.    33cts. 

_. Church  est  Earnest.    i8mo,  cloth.   40  cts. 

Christian  Progress.    Sequel  to  the  Anxi- 


ous Inquirer.    18mo,  cloth.    31  cents. 

THE  GREA  T  CONCERN.     By  N.  Adams,  D.  D.    12mo,  cloth.    85  cents. 

JOHN  HARRIS'S  WORKS.     The  Great  Teacher.     With  an  Intro- 
ductory  Essay  by  H.  Humphrey,  D.  D.    12mo,  cloth.    85  cents. 

The  Great  Commission.    With  an  Intro- 
ductory Essay  by  William  "R.  Williams,  D.  D.    12mo,  cloth.    Sl.OO. 


The  Pre-Adamite  Earth.    Contributions 


to  Theological  Science.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 
Man  PruievaL:     Constitution  and  Prim- 


itive Condition  of  the  Human  Being.    Portrait  of  Author.  12mo,  cloth.  $1.25. 


Patriarchy;  or.  The  Family,  its  Constitu- 


tion and  Probation.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.25. 


Sermons,  Charges,  Addresses,  4-c.    Two 


volumes,  octavo,  cloth.    $1.00  each. 
WILLIAM  R.  WILLIAMS.    Religious  Progress.    12mo,  cloth.  85  eta. 
Lectures  on  the  Lord's  Prayer.   l2mo, 


cloth.    85  cents. 

THE  BETTER  LAND.    By  Rev.  A.  C.  Thompson.    12mo,  cloth.    85  cents 

EVENING    OF  LIFE;    or.  Light  and  Comfort  amid  the  Shadows  of  Declin 
ing  Years.    By  Jeremiah  Chaplin,  D.  D.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

HEA  VEN.     By  James  William  Kimball.    12mo,  cloth.    $1.00. 

THE  SAINT'S  EVERLASTING  REST.     Baxter.    16mo,  cl.    50  cts. 


^ 


m 


.'^' 


^'a 


K«: 


r»^. 


m 


htki 


f«'.-vS>i.> 


'A-& 


foil 

wgC^ 

■I  1l!vV^ 


./iilipl 


m 


i^Mmm^j:i 


'immmm''is,:...... 


